This moanin I downlowded mI e-buk witch woz Grate Expektashuns, but I culdnt unnnerstan the Inglish.

What with the launch of the Sony e-reader, and the attacks on standardised spelling from those mad professors of Phonetics, or Fonetiks, I have had to ask myself a few hard questions.

  Am I just an old-fashioned book lover who can’t understand that the e-book is progress, like the presses of Gutenberg and Caxton?  Am I just an old-fashioned writer who can’t understand that spelling and grammar are elitist and that a move towards phonetic variants and free-style spelling is democratic?

   So troubled have I been that I have spent most nights this week sitting outside in my coat warming myself and a bottle of Hospices de Beaune over a tinker’s fire in the garden.

   This wasn’t just about drowning my sorrows in very good Burgundy. The Hospices de Beaune (1999) was essential.

  In 1443, Nicolas Rolin, Chancellor to the Duke of Burgundy, founded his hospice for the poor and needy. It is still there, and every year the proceeds from the wine auction are used to support the charity.

   I love that long connection, but more potent for me are the suggestions raised by the painting by Van Eyck, hanging in the Louvre: The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin. It is beautiful and strange, and it is unclear whether the Madonna is really in the room, or a vision of Monsieur Rolin. What is clear is that he kneels in front of an open Book of Hours. The City of Man can be seen in the distance, with its busy activities, but it is connected to the City of God - symbolised by the Madonna - by a book.

   A Book of Hours was illuminated by hand and often decorated with precious jewels; they were valuable objects. Yet their worth was more than their value. A Book of Hours was a bridge between the things of the spirit and the things of the world. In the picture, the tiny bridge is there, with the infant Christ pointing it out.

   For me, the physical object of the book is in itself a bridge between what began in the mind and returns there. It is also a bridge between different lives and different times. I love to take down a book from the shelf and turn the pages. Would I want to do that with my e-reader?

   How will my god-children learn to become curious about books when there are no books on the shelves? How can I say to them that a book is a safe passage, is a crossing, is a tightrope between two worlds?

   Literature – the real thing, is much more than content plus format, just as language is much more than information.

  The English language, with its spelling and its derivations, signals its ancientness, and how much has been moved through it. It is a living connection with the past. English is a vast and eccentric language, and that is its glory, both in its spoken dialects and in its written literature. I do not want to see that disappear because a bunch of lazy students and trendy professors cannot be bothered with the rules.

   Yes, the language is constantly evolving, and yes, text argot is fun, but standard spelling and standard grammar is freedom. Once you have it, you can read anything, and write quite a lot.

   When Dr Johnson compiled and published the first standard English dictionary in 1755,  he did so because he wanted to be sure that the language of his day would not become remote to future generations, as the language of Chaucer had become.  English is so exuberant and robust, always running away with itself, transforming itself as it travels across the world, that it is a benefit to hold onto a standard spelling and grammar. It is like a head-collar on a race horse.

   Few people possessed books in Chancellor Rolin’s day. Gutenberg and Caxton were to change all that as print became ubiquitous. But the e-reader revolution is not going to put books into the hands of ordinary people; it is taking them away again. Books are going to disappear, and the ones that actually make it into print will be few.

   Is this what we want? Perhaps it is. In any case, when there is no standard spelling or grammar, as few people will be able to read the literature of the past as will own it in book form. The bridges are being broken. That may be progress but it is not democracy.