Wise Council
Spir: By mistakenly lambasting the British -.0tincil for alleged desertion of the humble JtId book for the gleaming terminal, onathan Keates has done himself unneces- sarily out of a trip to Paris (Books in general, 15 March). A pity as he would have seen conclusive evidence of the power of the book in the Council's Paris library (not closed and not closing). The same goes for our 137 lending libraries in the 109 countries where we work, which, I can assure anxious readers and taxpayers, are not the subject of a 'recently announced decision to close'. Mr Keates has simply got it wrong. We run more than 200 library and information centres overseas and we have no intention of closing any of them.
If we had taken such a decision it would indeed have been bizarre. It would also have been wholly uncharacteristic of an organisation which knows better than many that circumstances around the globe are different and unconducive to a blanket idea of that kind. But let me ask the taxpayers a question: if local library services were well supplied with Tennyson, would they still prefer us to spend the limited money on sticking more copies of Tennyson's work in the Council library or on some other British service which Spanish or Portuguese stu- dents didn't have access to but wanted? It could be books; it could be a computer pro- gramme about studying in the United King- dom. It is more likely these days to be a mixture of both. Most of those 'following the correspon- dence' will have well understood that Jonathan Keates's book versus computer debate is a pointless one. It is as daft as food versus shelter. My niece likes to look up aardvark on the family PC; but she doesn't want to take it (the PC) to bed and hasn't thrown her books out onto the street. Nor have we, nor will we. We may or may not still live with two cultures in this world, but in terms of how we get informa- tion and access words we are certainly mov- ing into a dual one.
I ought to be flattered that a writer, even if of self-confessed 'impeccably marginal significance', should pay tribute to the Council's 'phrase-turners'. It is a point of larger satisfaction for us to be taken to task (by implication) for not lining up alongside 'shiftless inebriates and pinko subversives'. At least that is some advance on Beaver- brook.
John Hanson Director-General, The British Council, 10 Spring Gardens, London SW1
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