A very valid point – and I don't, for the record, have any issue with computer/video games.

I suppose I always read, but my mother was a very active censor on what – particularly in my teens, when there was very little around specifically for that age group.

I loved Biggles too, and devoured anything in our school library about WWII.

If anyone was ever in doubt about Gove's mental state, then reading the following link should provide some clarity: Gove aims to be the heir to Tony Blair For someone who harbours a desire to lead his party one day, I'd suggest that wanting to emulate a man who is hated by around 90% of tories is probably not the wisest choice. Conversely, it's another indication of just how far to the right Blair forced the Labour party

If anyone was ever in doubt about Gove's mental state, then reading the following link should provide some clarity: Gove aims to be the heir to Tony Blair For someone who harbours a desire to lead his party one day, I'd suggest that wanting to emulate a man who is hated by around 90% of tories is probably not the wisest choice. Conversely, it's another indication of just how far to the right Blair forced the Labour party

Put your claws away Minty there is nothing wrong with a bit of Tolkein.

We (Me and Mrs AS) have already managed to hook my 2+3 year old's into reading.
They actively ask for stories before bed every night.

Me too. I really enjoy playing some of the better video games out there, I think they can be just as creative or imaginative as a good film or book. However I'm pretty certain that, as a kid, had I had the option of watching TV, playing a games console or reading a book, I would certainly have read an awful lot less than I did and might not have got hooked on reading. Also, without wanting to sound snotty, and its in no way a criticism of games, TV or film, but I think generally a book requires you to use your imagination and think about things more than in those other forms of entertainment.
I worry about some of my friends who have kids and their rooms are filled with tv's/consoles etc from very young ages. A friend has 2 children aged 7 and 9 and both kids have a TV, games console and DVD player in their room and both kids have iPods. And, unsurprisingly, they both spend hours and hours each day in their room using one or another of their gadgets.
Aside from potential safety worries about what they're accessing on the Internet on their various gadgets, I just think they should be monitoring what, and how much they're doing on these gadgets.

Like you, my mother was very active on what I was allowed to do. We had a PC, and I was allowed to play games but only for so long, the same goes for TV. And I'm certain that restriction on what I could do pushed me toward books when I wouldn't necessarily have gone there myself, and without really making me feel like I'd missed out on TV or games.

Ignoring the fact that you said "a bit of ..."

It's a major work of fantasy fiction and a jolly good romp. The creation of the languages was an extraordinary feat. Which doesn't stop it being, IMO, overrated.

It shares with the likes of John Betjeman a rather reactionary attitude toward industrial and urban Britain. The Shire is England's countryside; Mordor is the industrial England – in essence, then, the midlands and north.

He cribbed from other sources – not in itself a problem, but hilariously, JRR himself claimed that the only resemblance to Wagner's Ring cycle was that both included a ring and rings are round, although various literary scholars have pointed out that this is a tad disingenuous – not least in the fact that both were influenced by a range of source materials, including Volsunga and the Nibelungenlied, but also in that Wagner had imbued his ring with certain powers, which was not something that was in the original myths and legends.

But my point would be, in essence, that LOTR fails as 'great literature' because it is little more than what it is (and it's arguably over long and indulgent). That's not a snobbish comment on genre fiction, though: I'd rate Terry Pratchett far, far more highly than JRR – simply because the bulk of the Discworld novels go beyond straightforward fantasy tales and have something to actually tell us about the human condition. You don't have to read them like that, but the satire is most certainly there. They're also deceptively simply written, and yet can have you laughing on one page and crying on the next.

You had a PC at home? Blimey, you're a lot younger than me.

Agree entirely with you on TV and the internet and games etc. I'd add, though, the sort of toys where they do it all for the child. I still think the best toys are some of the simplest – the ones that demand you use your imagination. I remember playing endlessly with old boxes and cartons when I was very young. Later, Lego was something that engaged you creatively and imaginatively.

Lego was great and something I really enjoyed as a kid. Back then the "best" sets were in many ways simply the biggest as they had more bricks, different types of brick and wheels and if you were lucky even an electric motor you could use to make the sails in a windmill go around!

Today unfortunately Lego has moved far closer to the "do it all for the child" approach where the sets build a specific thing such as stuff from the latest Iron Man film. The imagination bit has been removed.

When my eldest was growing up he had some sets similar to that but we also bought a second hand Lego set that was just a large wooden box crammed with all sorts of bricks. We still have it in the loft ready for any grand-kids should any ever come along. He (and me!) had far more fun trying to build things like the tallest tower we could without it toppling over than assembling the pre-defined sets. The latter tended to be rarely disassembled and the bricks rarely used to build something entirely out of the imagination. They became toys once assembled and so tended to have a similar lifespan to any other toy. If Star Wars was no longer flavour of the month neither was the Star Wars lego set. That was never true when Lego was just bricks!

I am sure Lego felt they had to move in this direction to remain in business but it intrigues me why this is so. What came first? lack of demand for traditional sets or was it just a marketing thing that meant the pre-defined sets are an even bigger market?

In case anyone missed it, this week's episode of Down the Line on BBC iPlayer is well worht a listen, especially the caller on gay marriage

In case anyone missed it, this week's episode of Down the Line on BBC iPlayer is well worht a listen, especially the caller on gay marriage

That's a really interesting question, which could be applied to all manner of things, including video and computer games etc.

I don't know the answer, but it does remind me of something that me and t'other half have noticed more than once while on the Continent – the amount of 'traditional' toy shops. Whether I'm just not aware of them over here, but I don't see them.