The question has changed, as one Oxford don noted wanly on social media, from ‘What are you reading at university?’ to ‘Are you reading at university?’ Such is the state of undergraduates entering English Literature courses these days, brains addled by scrolling on their mobile phones, that universities are now offering ‘reading resilience’ courses to help them tackle the unfamiliar task of reading long, old, sometimes difficult books.

It’s a whole new cause of gloom to discover that even students who have actively signed up to study English Literature at university are struggling to read books

We’re accustomed, some of us, to feeling gloomy about the sinking popularity of Eng Lit – once comfortably among the most popular choices at A-Level and most applied-for at university; now very mu

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