Booksellers like to think themselves a cut above the average shopkeeper (and I am no exception). They are the middlemen in the distribution of other people’s creativity. George Orwell was a bookseller, albeit briefly ... and there’s Max Harris too.

But come Christmas time they tend to hide their misgivings when publishers talk of books as ‘product’ and brag about their marketing strategies. This Christmas was no exception; the economic indicators were out, the recession was over and woe betide the bookseller who didn’t get behind the ‘product’.