Closed books

Pleasure in reading begins long before one is seven years old (Marc Lambert’s Platform, 19 November). What kills it off is peer pressure in one’s early years, when it is not done to seem to enjoy reading or study. It was so in the 1950s, and it is so now.

Also, now youth have far more than books to amuse and instruct them. Books are “old hat”.

JEREMY GODWIN

Penrith, Cumbria