Amazon

Military farce Sir: Your leading article (‘The age of realism’, 1 March) argues that the government must invest in the UK’s ‘thinned-out infantry ranks’. This is certainly true, but it does pass over, in my view, the more fundamental issue of the broken recruitment system. My own application to join the Royal Air Force was rejected on the basis that my mother is Polish. Given that Poland is an ally, this seems a curious justification for disqualification. I was born and educated in London, my mother having moved to the UK with my English father 30 years ago. Clearly I am not a security threat, but because ‘computer says no’, I will never be able to enlist. It is, then, with amusement and some frustration that I often read of the ‘recruitment crisis’.

One of the great recurring James Bond tropes is to make it look as though 007 has actually been killed before the film’s title credits. You Only Live Twice, From Russia with Love and Skyfall all begin with Bond in a position where his demise seems inevitable. Of course, he always turns up alive. (Quite what the rest of the film would consist of if he didn’t is anyone’s guess: perhaps Moneypenny dealing with probate or M arranging one of those ghastly direct cremations.) Now, however, we may have reached a danger from which even Bond cannot wriggle out. Amazon, the company responsible for one of the biggest flops in TV adaptation history, the Middle-earth prequel series The Rings of Power, has paid more than $1 billion to take ‘creative control’ of the Bond franchise.

As someone who worked full time in the office for 24 years and has now worked full time from home for nearly 21 – always, in both periods, on the staff – I can see both sides of the argument. But I do think the sequence matters. I would have had no idea how to work for my employers if I had begun at home. Indeed, the entire concept of a newspaper then – and even, to a large extent, now – depends on its collective capacity to find, write and edit news fast. Much of that stimulus comes from being in the same building. On Monday, Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, wrote a longish letter to all employees about work methods. He praised his company’s ‘culture’, but asked whether it is best set up to ‘invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other’.

On the day before my seventh birthday, which I spent at my grandma’s in Yorkshire, a young man named Raymond Jones walked into North End Music Stores in Liverpool and asked the guy behind the counter for a record on which an obscure local group called the Beatles provided the backing track for a song titled ‘My Bonnie’. The guy behind the counter was the shop’s manager and the son of its owner. His name was Brian Epstein, and as a restless budding entrepreneur he felt he should be alert to what was going on around him. Because of young Raymond’s evident enthusiasm, Brian made a note on a piece of paper saying: ‘The Beatles? Check on Monday.’ Which he did. Intrigued by what he saw, he wondered if he should become their manager.

Selling books through Amazon is now part and parcel of a working author’s life. It would be a brave writer who decided to refuse to allow their work to be sold through earth’s biggest retailer. But that is exactly what Dave Eggers has done with his new book, The Every, which he has decreed can only be purchased from independent bookstores. Sorry, Jeff Bezos; this one’s not for you. It is hard to dismiss his decision to eschew Amazon as simply a quixotic act of rebellion by a washed-up has been Eggers has form in this regard.

When everything re-opened after the first lockdown, I didn’t immediately head to a restaurant, bar or hairdresser. I went to the Second Chance charity shop on Blackstock Road in north London. It wasn’t that I was feeling particularly charitable. If anything, my visit came from a place of selfishness. I wanted to rootle around, alone, and find something unexpected — and probably pointless — in the piles of bric-à-brac. Out I came with a milk jug (£2.50) and a book titled Cool Names for Babies (50p) written by two women called Pamela Redmond Satran and Linda Rosenkrantz. I instantly felt better, as though the past few months had been a bad dream. I can’t be the only person who has missed this sort of experience.