This episode opens with a reflection on the newly launched Go All In campaign, part of the National Year of Reading 2026, a nationwide push to get Britain reading for pleasure again. Backed by the National Literacy Trust and the Department for Education, the initiative aims to reignite our love of books at a time when fewer children and teenagers are reading for fun.

From there, we turn to someone who has spent a lifetime thinking about why books matter. Ian Patterson, poet, translator, academic, and author of Books: A Manifesto or How to Build a Library, joins to reflect on what it means to live among books. From parting with his 6,000 volume library to rediscovering the emotional and intellectual worlds that books hold, Ian speaks with warmth, wit and deep humanity about why reading is not a luxury, but a way of being alive.

Together, we explore the promise each book holds and why, even in a digital age, our shelves might just be the truest mirrors of who we are.