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Learning to read
by Godfrey Gould

I have always known how to read. Well, for as long as I can remember.

We are constantly being told of sundry ways in which children might be taught to read at school. I don't understand any of these systems. But I do know adults who can hardly read at all, or with great difficulty, or who have to speak the words they are reading sotte voce as they are unable to conceptualise the words on the page in their minds. Certainly as a teacher I had pupils with these problems, and when working, one of my senior staff used slightly to irritate me as he mouthed the words, albeit softly, as he read.

I taught myself how to read. As a child I was read to by my mother and, even better, by her mother, my grandmother. What I particularly liked was to sit on my grandmother's knee as she read, ostensibly to look at the pictures. But without really knowing it I was teaching myself to read by following mentally the words on the page. Perhaps I didn't know myself what was happening, but my grandmother became aware of the skills I was acquiring. On one occasion she deliberately misread something and I corrected her. My cat was out of its bag! It is said that parents should not teach their offspring how to read, lest they use a wrong method. Surely the result is the important thing - what one achieves, not necessarily how one achieves it. Certainly my reading skills, however acquired, has not detracted from my learning and communication abilities. Otherwise you would not be reading this, that is, if you can?

And reading leads to books. I used to borrow books from Libraries as a child. One book at a time and for two weeks maximum was the order in those days. And I liked receiving books for presents, especially Annuals. For I would purchase very week the "Beano" and later the "Hotspur". When a teenager my interest in aircraft moved me on to the "ATC Gazette" and to buy Aircraft Recognition Books. I could also borrow such books from the Newcastle-on-Tyne Central Non-fiction Library. Access to the books in this Library, albeit public, was then denied to the general reader. You had to consult the card catalogue, fill in a requisition order and take it to the counter for the requested volume to be brought to you. Some books you could take home but too many could only be consulted on site. As I was under age when I joined this Library my mother had to come with me on my first visit to vouch for me and to accept responsibility for any damage I might inflict on any precious volume. But they were safe. To this day it offends me that anybody should write in a book, except inside the cover or to autograph the title page.

My earliest books and which I still possess I acquired as birthday presents at the age of 15. They are here on my desk as I write - "The First Railway across the Border" (George Dow, LNER, 2/6), ""The Locomotives of Sir Nigel Gresley" (O S Nock, Longmans, Green, 10/6) and "Titled Trains of Great Britain" (Cecil J Allen, Ian Allan, 6/-), all published in that year, 1946. Obviously my allegiance had moved very firmly from aircraft to railways where it has remained to this day. However, I do have many books on aircraft as well as on buses, trams, trolley buses, ships,  motor cars, lorries and almost anything else that moves. But these can be counted in dozens whereas those on railways which line my shelves can be counted in several hundreds. I am, indeed, an avid collector of books per se. Amongst the regrets in my life are the books that I have sold and, even worse, given away. I do wonder, however, where I would put them, because I cannot in reality find shelf space for the 3,000 or so volumes that I now have. I have perhaps become a bit of a book snob and sometimes make some judgement on people whose homes I visit by the number and selection of their books that I see. Very unkind, I know, and ungraciously subjective.

Helene Hanff (she of "84 Charing Cross Road" and "Q's Legacy") once wrote that she liked to buy books that she had already read, but second hand, because they had an additional story to tell. I can empathise. In March 1953 I purchased for 4/- a copy of "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" by Thomas Hardy, a novel I had read some years before whilst still at school. This 1920 printing is inscribed thus -

"The Revd A C N Laws
an appreciation
Francis Wrighton
Hexham 22nd June 1923"

Now, what do you make of that?