Books in large wide open shelves of beechwood, built specially for the purpose by a local artisan with an accent so thick it sounded like he was speaking through a mouthful of the local fouasse cake in antique bookcases with doors that were like fretted screens, so that the books behind them looked as if they were in a kind of beautiful prison books behind glass and in sandalwood chests. Because my father is a romantic from way back, it had a fireplace and a large winged chair beside it, a desk made of fragrant Indonesian wood, quills and silver inkstand and leather bound blotter at the ready, for when note taking mania took hold of you blue toile de Jouy curtains featuring scenes of 18th century bucolic life, a Persian carpet decorated with longtailed birds alighting in marvellous trees and of course, books. As the house took shape again, the golden lit flesh reknitting over its beautiful stone bones, this room became a hallowed place, a place of light and shadows, cool in summer, warm in winter. A great collector of books old and new, many on esoteric or obscure subjects, he had had a room set aside from the beginning in the cavernous old place he and my mother had bought when it was not much more than a haunted ruin, for just this purpose. The first library I remember was my father's, in our house deep in the green, wooded countryside of southwestern France.

Edited version of an address given at the Alia 2000 conference 23-26 October 2000 As a place of enchantment the actual library, with actual books, will continue to work real and extraordinary magic in the 21st century. At a time when many people, including unfortunately some librarians, seem determined to misrepresent the literate, it is important to remember that the digitised and electronic library is not going to interest those people who are not readers already.

The Hoax by Sophie Masson