The internet is full of bookshelf angst. Now that your bookshelf has become the go-to backdrop for your Zoom life, from Jon Snow on Channel 4 news (is that the Endless City with its yellow spine?) to junior ministers going for gravitas in front of antique tomes and US pundits with artful displays of their own books. We have all become much more worried about what our bookshelf says about us.

So, having started lockdown broadcasting next to a Tintin mural that still graces the wall of our spare room from the days when it was my youngest’s bedroom, I decided my bookshelf needed sorting. Actually, there are three bookshelves, one in the office, filling a wall of our meeting room, a smaller set of shelves next to my office desk, and my bookshelf at home. The latter includes my own books alongside quite a few that have found their way home from the office and never quite found their way back. Colleagues have done the same thing as is evident from their own Zoom backdrops which explains we can never find anything.

Last week as part of our work on the national urban design code we were looking for John Punter’s book on American design codes. Having sent a colleague to search the office I realised that it had been on my bookshelf all along. We had less luck with a book on French planning and ended buying it again. And, by the way, if anyone knows where our cherished and now sadly out-of-print Vinex Atlas is, I’ll happily pay a reward!

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