Women reading at Ventnor library on the Isle of Wight, one of those threatened with closure this year. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian
¨Author Philip Pullman has described the spontaneous surge of popular support for libraries threatened with closure by local authority cuts – which will see Save Our Libraries Day protests taking place up and down the UK tomorrow, Saturday 5 February – as "one of the first great shots across the bows of the cuts battleship".
Pullman, author of the celebrated Northern Lights trilogy, compared the activism over the threatened library closures to the student protests over tuition fees, saying: "I hope it'll bring to the attention of even the thickest-headed local council member that there is a great deal more passionate feeling about libraries than they bargained for."
At least 80 events will take place tomorrow, with a roster of notable authors coming out against the cuts, which now threaten more than 400 libraries across the UK: among them, Kate Mosse on the Isle of Wight protest, GP Taylor at Easingwold in North Yorkshire, Philip Pullman and Mark Haddon at read-ins in Oxfordshire, and Julia Donaldson lobbying the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh.¨
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Article by Benedicte Page. For the Guardian
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