Last night I attended one of the regular dinners of this society founded in 1921. It meets eight times a year at the Savile Club in Mayfair.

The Chatham House Rule applies, so I cannot share with you what was said by whom and technically I cannot reveal the name of the speaker (but I do have his permission). It was Stephen Prickett and he gave a fascinating description of his current job which has one of the longest titles in my experience - Director of the Armstrong Browning Library and Margaret Root Brown Professor for Browning Studies and Victorian Poetry, at Baylor University, Waco, Texas, as well as Regius Professor Emeritus of English Language and Literature at the University of Glasgow, Scotland - phew.

But the most embarrassing moment was when neither of us could remember what he'd worked on for Macmillan. He edited the series 'Romanticism in perspective'.

If the Society of Bookmen has a rather traditional feel, the Centre for Creative Business could not be more 21st century. It is a partnership between the London Business School and the University of the Arts London which I represent on their committee. The strange thing is that both the Society and the Centre have very similar aims - to inspire, facilitate, network, enjoy and help sustain creative businesses, the former restricted to writers, booksellers, publishers and other members of the book trade, the latter a wider group.

Off to rainy Basingstoke today. Apparently there are rumours that Basingstoke can deploy nuclear weapons in less than an hour. I'd better check out this new element on the axis of evil.

And finally an excellent piece by Bryan Appleyard in The Times about the importance of popular science books. His last para says it all.

'These new, humble, wondrous books — and, indeed, that great TV testament to wonder, Planet Earth — are an unalloyed good. They restore the true faith, and will, in time, send children to seek out whatever maths and physics courses they can find amid the debris of the science faculties.'