THE author Terry Deary, famous for the Horrible Histories series, has made a multitude of enemies in the last week, all because he has had a go at public libraries.

In a lengthy tirade released as Sunderland council investigated closing branches to save money, he claimed that they have “been around too long” and “are no longer relevant”. Even worse, he raged that they “are putting bookshops out of business” and that, basically, we all need to wise up because “we've got this idea that we've got an entitlement to read books for free, at the expense of authors, publishers and council tax payers.”

I am not surprised that he has been receiving hate mail since these comments were first published in the Sunderland Echo as they are so incredibly misguided. For a start, the book industry’s recent troubles haven’t been hastened by libraries, with which it has co-existed for over a century. Surely we should be pointing the finger at digital downloads and the rise of retailers such as Amazon? 

I feel enraged particularly because he clearly has no idea just what is supplied by a modern library. Libraries have been trying hard to modernise their image, and we are lucky in Basingstoke to have a shining example of what they bring to a community.

Our Discovery Centre, in the heart of the town centre, has a wealth of services to offer, supplying hearing aid batteries, screening films for children and adults, helping those researching their family trees, holding events for mothers and toddlers, organising writers’ groups and author talks and so on in addition to loaning books, CDs and DVDs. It is even trialling digital borrowing.

Anyone who is snooty about the people who use it need to shake off their prejudice and begin to understand what it means to have somewhere free to go which is a calm and relatively quiet place in which to avail of services which might not otherwise be available to a person.

When I have spoken to its staff, they have told me tales of people who have escaped from awful situations into its comforting confines, who have found jobs while researching on the computers there, or who have had a world opened up to them through the power of the written word.       

I spend a fortune on books and consider myself a bibliophile and I believe it’s all because I was taken to the library once a week as a child. Books were always in our home, and it was clear to me that my mum and dad had a passion for the written word too, often recommending a book or talking to me about something they were currently in the middle of reading.      

Many people aren’t so lucky, something Terry Deary shouldn’t forget.