I’ve just read a scary story about literary ignorance in Britain. Published at Ananova, some of the most frightening results of a survey of 3000 people are:

• One third of people didn’t know Shakespeare wrote plays (many thought he’d been a king!)
• A quarter didn’t know John Keats was a poet
• And for me, the most shocking, is that more than two thirds didn’t know A A Milne was a writer. Hello?! Winnie the Pooh?!

The scariest part is that I suspect the results might be even worse here in Australia – both if the survey asked about British writers, and perhaps worse if it asked about Australian writers, who don’t get anywhere near enough air time here.

I don’t want to be a big literary snob, but when people like – well, I don’t even want to mention their names in my blog, but typical celebrities of today who make the headlines despite having no skills or personality – are the names everybody knows, and people in Britain don’t know who Shakespeare was – well, I think that’s a pretty sad state of affairs. I’m not saying everyone should memorise a Keats poem or read the complete works of Shakespeare, but is just a little bit of awareness too much to ask for?