The meeting was held in Saffron Walden Library on Wednesday 14th January at 7:30 pm, when author Ian Patterson talked about his new publication, Books: A Manifesto, or, How to Build a Library. This is a book about books and “the subversive power of reading and the strange, enduring magic of books as objects”.

“Ever since childhood books have been at the centre of Ian Patterson’s life, as a poet, teacher, translator, bookseller and collector. As he constructs the last of many libraries, he makes an impassioned case for the radical importance of reading in our lives – from Proust to Jilly Cooper, from golden age detective novels to avant-garde poetry.”