The New Dark Ages

Without any question the most important book of the year. This book is a flashing emergency light for our culture. I genuinely could not love James Marriott's writing and thinking more. Let me sign up to his literacy army right now - I would follow him anywhere -- Marina Hyde
Superb. The best way to make the case for good books is to write one - and in this learned and highly entertaining jeremiad, that is precisely what James Marriott has done -- Tom Holland
A heartfelt polemic ... Both a lament and celebration * Observer *
I love James and his bulging brain -- Pandora Sykes
Simply brilliant and very bracing -- India Knight
Fascinating … a usefully cautionary contribution * Spectator *
An excellent book … [James] is a commentator of rare erudition, insight and wit … His bracing argument should be enough to rouse our collective reason from sleep. An outstanding debut * New European *
Tells the story of what happens when a civilisation that over several centuries came to think through the written word begins, unthinkingly, to lose the capacity to read because the rapid ascendancy of screens … At first blush it is a sweeping thesis, but Marriott sustains his paean to print with panache …. Compelling … Refreshing * The Times *
[A] thoughtful and forceful book * Mail on Sunday *
[A] compelling analysis… Marriott’s style is perfectly balanced between passion and objectivity * Critic *
A big thesis [that] articulates something useful about the terrible age of flux in which we find ourselves … Marriott’s book [is] lucid, disarmingly well-written and impassioned * Irish Times *
This short, spirited work is a love letter to the written word, penned with the heartfelt and passionate language of a jilted spouse * Nature *