Alcalá Grupo Editorial

Val Mc Dermid’s comments (Fiction readers have made the best leaders in Covid-19 crisis, says Val McDermid, 16 August) struck a chord with me. Once, decades ago, I was sent on a work-based software engineering course. Most of those attending, myself included, were bemused by the course leader spending half of the first day on what felt like literary criticism. He was not interested in what textbooks we read, but was particularly interested in what fiction we read, how much, and how varied our literary tastes were. A few of us were asked to sum up in a few words the plot of a favourite work of fiction, or what we thought of it.