Who said physical books are on their way out? This was the scene on the Hammersmith and City line on Wednesday.

I was reading Bill Emmott’s Good Italy, Bad Italy. My neighbour was reading King Richard II, no doubt having just seen the superlative version shown in The Hollow Crown on BBC2 last week. Across the way, inevitably, a young man had a George Martin doorstop (although, as someone pointed out on Twitter, Shakespeare’s history plays are the original Game of Thrones). There was someone with a beaten up old copy of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, and a serious looking chap with the paperback of Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

There were, of course, a few Kindles to be seen. I now always assume that their owners are reading Fifty Shades of Grey.