Books are dying. Across the world the number of people reading is in free fall. Literacy is declining or stagnating in most developed countries. At universities, students are unable to read the books assigned to them by their teachers. Addictive digital entertainment technologies have colonised our free time with infantilising ‘slop’. The golden chain of knowledge linking reader to reader through the centuries is breaking for the first time since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire ushered in the Dark Ages.

The New Dark Ages is an impassioned attack on the trivial and meaningless culture of the screen and a defence of the written word. Drawing on history and classic works of literature and theory, The New Dark Ages argues that reading and writing are essential for innovation, creativity and critical thinking.

Above all, the culture of print is essential to the functioning of modern democracies which require their citizens to grapple with ideas at length and in depth. And as print dies, we risk returning to the chaos, tribalism, and rage of a pre-literate society.

James Marriot is a Times columnist and one of the paper’s best-read writers, covering society and ideas and culture. He also reviews podcasts. His recent TV and radio appearance include Newsnight, Sky News, the Today Programme and Front Row, and he has made documentaries for BBC Radio 4 and 3 about procrastination and James Joyce’s Ulysses respectively. Before joining The Times, James worked in the rare book trade.