I have never travelled in china or Japan, but friends who have recount the shock that comes from finding oneself suddenly illiterate. An English-speaker in Russia or Greece will, at least, soon be able to make the sounds she sees depicted on road signs and maps, even if those sounds are mostly devoid of meaning. But a public notice in Tokyo or Beijing is another matter altogether.

Yet in 2003, a Department for Education and Skills survey found that one in six respondents had serious problems in literacy or numeracy; one child in five leaves primary school unable to read properly. Shocking statistics, but perhaps less so if we consider how relatively new the idea of universal literacy is. My great-grandmother was born in the East End of London; her birth certificate shows that her mother simply made a crude X, “her mark”, where her signature was to go — that was not much more than 100 years ago.

So I'm more than pleased that we can, in our small way here, take part in Channel 4's “Lost for Words” initiative, which began in the autumn with a series of programmes (and schemes) to get kids reading. One scheme was a petition asking the Government to make raising literacy levels in schools an even greater priority — via the power for good known as Richard & Judy's Book Club, hundreds of authors (including me) were persuaded to sign.

As you may have read in our news pages, yesterday four of them — Joanna Trollope, Kate Mosse, Sophie Kinsella and Tony Parsons — brought those signatures to Downing Street. We have all of their names (the Great and the Good, we could call them, or G&G, for short) here in Books, and we have asked a few of them to tell us why they have chosen to write to Mr Brown.

You could say — well, they would do that, wouldn't they? They want folk to buy their books! But of course (and here we come back to the road signs... and the gas bills, and the instruction books, and directions on packets of rice and so much else that needs to be deciphered if life is to be lived to the full) reading books is only the half of it. The written word is a door to that leads to realms both enchanting and mundane, but both are vital to survival. We here at Books have always been keen proponents of reading as one of life's great pleasures — but it is one of life's necessities, too, and one that nobody should be denied.

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