Booksquare

The discourse at reading groups does not often have much in common with the language of scholarship. Prof Currie and a fellow English literature don were once barred from a book club lest they ruin the fun with talk of structuralism and the like.

For others, that expulsion might represent a happy revolution. According to Professor John Sutherland, of London University: “People are reclaiming the right to read from pointy-headed academics”.

• Why the book club is more than a fad: It is a phenomenon that has become a near ubiquitous part of bourgeois life – and it is about far more than just reading