In 2011 I, along with thousands of other authors, librarians, teachers, readers and campaigners from across the country took part in the Save Our Libraries campaign. I volunteered as an author in residence at a failing school, opened the new library there and cheered as the results improved dramatically. In the ten years after that campaign, a further 800 libraries across the country closed. Since 2016, 180 council-run libraries have either closed or been handed over to voluntary groups. A third of those remaining – around 950 – reduced their hours.

Two thousand jobs have been lost and dozens more libraries are threatened…but it’s not just the jobs. It’s the community and all that a library offers – a warm space with access to knowledge in all its forms, help with job applications, play groups that introduce kids who might otherwise not even own a book to the joys of reading, events and workshops for older people (I’ve led several, helping them capture their stories for themselves and their families)…all of it provided by properly trained librarians, if you’re lucky, or keen volunteers.

A library is a doorway to another world. It offers opportunity and hope to the most deprived communities as well as safety and a place to go when there is nowhere else. Absolutely anyone can use their local library, from the middle-class mum with tiny toddlers who is tearing her hair out to the pensioner in the corner who might otherwise speak to no-one else all that week.

With school libraries also decimated, public libraries provide a place to do homework and an alternative to an empty house or cold, wet streets. I know so many people who have had to overcome adversity to get to where they are today and almost every single one of them cites their library as a crucial factor at some point in their young life. And yet it is the most deprived communities, according to the government’s indices of deprivation, that are four times more likely to lose a library. We must not just reverse this downward trajectory; we have to rebuild more and even better libraries not only for future generations but for all those right now who desperately need one.

That pic above? It’s me in a library, talking not just about my books but about writing, encouraging my audience to explore it in any way they wish. As part of my role at the Crime Writers’ Association, I’m about to start helping with National Crime Reading Month which works in partnership with libraries to bring the best of the genre to an even wider audience. We can all help in ways big or small.

Get involved in local campaigns or support the Library Campaign: https://librarycampaign.com/

Come along to a National Crime Reading Month event: https://crimereading.com/

Attend other events too – your local library will happily tell you about them – and help preserve something far too precious to lose.