BOOKSHOPS: Is there a revival in trade?

As television has grown from the mild diversion it was in the early 1950s to the national obsession it has now become, so our cultural watchdogs have warned us that, amongst other things, it would be instrumental in killing the function of reading. Yet there is evidence that this is by no means true; the burgeoning years of paperbacks have coincided with the boom years of TV, and how much ‘serious’ reading has in fact been stimulated by TV's more cultural offerings? Whatever the truth of the matter, D.H. Noble argues that currently we are witnessing a resurgence in the bookshop business.