Let's put aside for a moment the possibility (very likely) that our (my) memories (I have only one - ah, no, I mean only one system of memories to forage about in) are getting feebler because we don't use them: by this I mean that our mobile/cell phones remember contact numbers and Google remembers everything else.

Over and above this we seem to have been persuaded that if it's recent it must better than if it isn't. Newer books/articles/discussions on anything are by definition superior to preceding ones because, I suppose, if they are newer all the knowledge that came before will have been included in the latest gobbet, we think. Even if that were so, there remains a problem. It isn't all about information. There are insights that someone may have had in the past that you can only find...in the past. And in paper books.

Example: this morning a friend came round (oh, okay then - an ex-husband) and we were chatting about whether there is actually a Qur'anic injunction against alcohol (what else would one talk about first thing in the morning?), and I suddenly remembered a wonderful opening passage in a biography of Stalin. The author, Alex de Jonge, provides a geographical explanation of who drinks what, why and what effect it has on them. Witty, insightful, true. I ran up to find the book, showed my ex the passage and we gggled over it. But you can't find it on line: books that have not been digitised are still needed. Though, wait, Let me check...

...Damn! All the same, it doesn't quite have the economy and neatness of de Jonge's original disquisition.

By the way, apropos injunctions against alcohol. Don't ask me if the translations are accurate. How would I know? Blame Google...