Foreword / [by Susan Hill] --
A roof of one's own / Jeanette Winterson --
Why do we read? / Alain de Boton --
How I discovered books / Roger Scruton --
Could we see some identification, please? / Sophie Hannah --
De-accessioning / Penelope Lively --
Visiting the store-room / Francis King --
Learning to read, Yorkshire 1928 / Kit Pyman --
O, the books of my youth! / Juliet Nicolson --
Corpses in the quad : the curious case of Oxbridge crime / Andrew Taylor --
P.C. Plod apprehended / Andrew Taylor --
The country of the pointed firs / Penelope Fitzgerald --
The Brontë sisters / Lucasta Miller --
William Maxwell : writer of unmissable novels /Adèle Geras --
Enjoying Scott / W.E.K. Anderson --
Left hand, right hand! revisited / Philip Ziegler --
Re-reading David Copperfield / William Trevor --
The happy priest / Jane Gardam --
Lilias Rider Haggard / Patricia Cleveland-Peck --
J.L. Carr's A month in the country / Penelope Fitzgerald --
Rooms of their own / Margaret de Fonblanque --
Our writers / Ronald Blythe --
The ghost stories of M.R. James / John Francis --
An inheritance / Philip Hensher --
The man on the number 46 bus / Nick Harkaway --
Coming in from the outside / Inga-Stina Ewbank.