After I ventured to New York in May 2024, bound for a discerning literary journey round the city’s bookshops, libraries and hotels, I received some lively and constructive feedback from Spectator readers. Many, thankfully, agreed with my arguments about its bookish charms, but a consistent theme in the comments I received was, “How can you claim that New York is the quintessential literary city? Have you forgotten Paris?” To which my reply was reasonably simple: “What about Oxford, London, Rome, Edinburgh, Dublin, Santiago or San Francisco?” All of them hugely distinguished citadels of the written word, both present and historic...