It's probably fair to say that I put my three sons off reading. They had their bedtime/anytime stories for years, of course, but had to become used to my saying 'Just a minute' or 'Hang on' while I raced to the end of a page or chapter. And their father used to become hypertensive, to say the least, whenever he saw me grilling chops with a fork in one hand and a book in the other.
Still, I suppose one out of three is not too bad: my army son reads military history and biography. My eldest reads the papers sometimes, and occasionally succumbs to the charms of a particular style of book: the last I can recall was Gail Holst's Road to Rembetika, a fascinating account of the hashish inspired music that reached Greece from Asia Minor in the 1920s.
But as for my 30-year-old baby, Alexander, what is there to say? As far as I know, he has not even read my first book, in which he has a starring role, as in it I recount in dramatic detail the story of his birth, at which time I very nearly died.
He reads the Greek sports news; otherwise, he is the complete technophile, and changes his mobile phone almost as often as he changes his socks. I understand this up to a point: every so often the Kindle sings its siren song, but so far I have either put wax in my ears, or tied myself to a mast, figuratively speaking, because I value the book as object, as well as for a host of other reasons.
With Alexander's history, I didn't expect much when I showed him the marvellous present sent to me recently: a first edition of Charles Dickens' Household Words: Vol. I.
It is a thing of beauty, and was clearly designed to be a joy forever. Of an impressive solidity, it has a dark crimson and gold-embossed leather spine, and blue and beige marbled swirls with another tinge of crimson on the hard covers. Inside there is just a slight foxing on fine paper bordered in light black: every page is set in two columns.
Household Words, which appeared weekly, was edited by Dickens from March 1850 until May 1859.