In the echo chamber that we sometimes inhabit as publishers, one often repeated concern is that we employ far too many English Literature graduates. I refer you, then, to a piece in The Times today by the sports writer Simon Barnes, which neither encourages nor refutes this view particularly, but which is definitely very amusing and thought provoking on the subject of English Literature degrees and their purpose. The précis version, for those with too little time to read it, is that young people today are under far too much pressure to follow degrees which ‘transform them into an effective economic unit’, that this is not helped by educationists developing courses that ‘look like short cuts to a sexy job’ (e.g. sport, journalism, fashion) and that it’s a real shame that we can’t go back to the days when a good old English Literature degree gave students the time and the excuse to ‘suss out the meaning of life.’ Barnes suggests that modern education prepares people for wealth but that the old approach made you richer. Or, in other words, that reading is the route to a more developed world – and self – view. I hate to hark on a familiar theme, but there’s much here to compare with the problems intrinsic to high street bookselling today; the best-seller, trend-following culture making some people a lot wealthier, for sure, but almost certainly making us as a nation poorer from a cultural point of view.