Is Reading the Greatest Leveller?

The bookish equivalent of Desert Island Discs, yesterday’s episode of My Life in Books (BBC2, first shown in 2011) was a delight. Baroness James of Holland Park, known to her readers as P D James offered proof that reading and writing will keep you young (to hear her read Austen was a pleasure), while Richard Bacon was candid as ever when describing the many ways in which he can relate to the character of Dexter in David Nicholl’s One Day. Ann Robinson made much of the fifty-five year age-gap between her guests. They didn’t. Their mutual love of books made it all but disappear.