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
Anyone who wants to understand the world today needs urgently to read this book – Naomi Alderman
If our addiction to smartphones is sapping our ability to concentrate long enough to read a book, James Marriott’s clear, engaging and original prose may yet seduce us back to it, or at least slow our retreat from the page – Philippa Perry
In this bracing and breezy book, James Marriott explains why the world feels so loud, chaotic and angry - we have lost the reflection and empathy fostered by reading. Put down your phone and read The New Dark Ages – Helen Lewis
In this worthy heir to Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Marriott makes an urgent and compelling case that the death of reading is accelerating and the consequences might prove worse than we feared – Cal Newport
Pungent, learned and bang up-to-date… A spirited polemic on one of the most important cultural crises of all. Essential reading – Andrew Marr
The New Dark Ages…[is] an essential conversation-start about the imperilled future of reading * Bookseller *

James Marriott is a columnist at The Times. He presented the Radio 4 series How Reading Made Us about the history of literacy and writes the popular Substack newsletter Cultural Capital. Before joining The Times, James worked in the rare book trade. He was born and grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne and studied English Literature at the University of Oxford.

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