Newcastle University

Where do your books come from, primarily?

I buy occasionally, but not many because I’ve always been a … I’ve been a librarian, my husband was a librarian – I’ve been a member of a public library since the earliest age I was able to join. I’m not quite sure when it was, actually, going back to childhood, whether it was five or six. But we had an excellent new public library, and for me it was just a lifeline. I suppose like many people of my generation, we had a few books at home, but not a great many, and we really did not buy books in those days. They were things you got at Christmas or on birthdays, and school prizes. But otherwise it was a rare, rare event to have a book given. And I suppose because I’ve always been a member of public libraries, I’ve thought ‘well, I don’t need to buy’. I buy occasionally, for presents, and now I get a lot in charity shops. […] But if you say now where do I get my books, over the course of a longish life where you get them changes, doesn’t it, as well? I can see that books now to buy in real terms are not as much as when I was a child, but many of them are not as well produced.