Recently, I visited the city of Oxford, home to Oxford University and a deep literary tradition in academia, publishing and writing. There, Lewis Carol devised Alice in Wonderland to entertain the children of the Christ Church College dean. There, CS Lewis and his friend JRR Tolkein met in The Eagle and Child pub to critique each other’s works. There, Oscar Wilde became infamous for his flamboyant ways. There, resident Philip Pulman dreamed up the His Dark Materials series, based in the Oxford cityscape.

It is easy to see why the city provides such rich fodder for imaginations. This, the city of spires, is a place for pondering and learning, and for dreaming and creating. It is also a city of book shops where a love for the written word – the physical book, not the ebook – abounds. Nowhere is this passion more prominent  than in the world-famous Bodleian Library: one of oldest libraries in Europe, with 11 million books, many of which are kept in underground stores so vast that a railway system operates to transport the books. I attended a wonderful exhibition there called ‘Magical Books: from the Middle Ages to Middle-earth’ where some fascinating books and manuscripts were on display from the authors C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Susan Cooper, Alan Garner and Philip Pullman.

By the end of my visit, I felt I had learnt a lot from the literary legacy I encountered. These are the main points  I considered:

1. Authors must read and learn from the works of others.

None of the authors whose works inspired me on my visit to Oxford wrote in isolation. They were learned. They were well read. They were humble enough to recognise the merits of sharing their works with others and soliciting feedback. In a place like Oxford, you realise just how many intelligent, talented, important books exist, and how much of the author’s role is to be reader also – but not a mindless reader; one who thirsts to learn, who really considers the craft and content of a book, who will push beyond the boundaries of comfort and read across genres to broaden the mind.

2. Writing is a labour of love, requiring immense thought, respect and care.

I stood before handwritten first-draft manuscripts and marvelled at how neat they were. Apart from the penmanship, it was clear that a great deal of thought had gone into each and every line. The discipline required to write by hand, rather than on a screen when you can type faster than your mind can create and dash out messy prose that you fiddle with endlessly… it brings to mind the care that authors ought to take; the intensity of the process, in which each and every word unequivocally belongs in the book and has been carefully chosen and pondered; the respect for the very art that is making a book.

3. Physical books matter.

I am realistic about the times in which we live: my books are published in ebook format as well as for print, and I have an ereader. Yet in Oxford, I found the digital world falling away in this place that so respects and reveres the physical book. Take, for example, the Norrington Room in Blackwell’s bookshop: in a single room three miles of shelving bear books (it is, in fact, the largest single room in the world  selling books). Stand in the middle of that room and turn slowly: what a sight. And I think most people struggle to leave that mighty shop without at least one newly purchased tome in their bag.

The verdict? Progress is wonderful: exciting, novel, challenging. But to succeed, it must be rooted in the past. The writers and publishers of previous generations had it right – not just for their times, but for ours also.