i will say i think that s a bad strategy on trump s end. i really think they should have saved their witness for trial. putting a witness before the grand jury just gives the prosecutors time to find out what he s going to say, gives them to question him under oath, reveal some of the cards early. i would have held on to that witness. but in terms of michael cohen, he s a problematic witness, convicted of lying to congress, convicted fraudster. also somebody who made money off of selling books and podcasts and so forth, criticizing trump. a lot to work with. ultimately, problematic witnesses can be used and rehabilitated if it there s enough other evidence, but there are open questions about whether there s sufficient evidence aside from cohen to carry the weight here for prosecutors. one of the key questions is do you have documents to do the paper trail and the financial
the most effective way to read a book, which is not true of how we listen to music, for example, it s actually much better digitally and much more convenient and money and all the rest. but with books it isn t. perhaps there are other factors. i mean, for a start, you can download pretty much any book that s ever been written in a millisecond on a smart tablet. so, that s convenience. there s also a, sort of, environmental question. i mean, you make profits from selling books. books, ultimately, are made of carbon. and, frankly, they do look, in our efforts to get to a carbon zero world, a decarbonized world, they look like something we should get rid of. i think i would sort of argue, though, that they have an enduring and remarkably durable role to continue to play, if it s a good book. i mean, i think that, ideally, as booksellers, we sell good books. well, it doesn t matter if it s a good book or a bad book. well, no, but a good book goes onto a bookshelf.
Stephen Sackur speaks to the hugely successful bookseller James Daunt. From Waterstones to Barnes & Noble he has fought off ebooks and online retail to revive.
then publishing would indeed fall down that sort of rather perilous slope that you re describing. but, actually, i ve been having this conversation since 1990. everybody wails that the book is going to die, that fiction is homogenizing, that we will have no creativity. but actually, there have been moments when that appears to be a little bit true at the moment. we have bestseller lists dominated by romance writing, but actually underneath it is bubbling a huge ferment of great, great creativity. and that s what we promote. 0ne one last element of this sort of cultural battleground that we ve been exploring. do you welcome the idea in your bookshops of selling books, classic books by well known authors that have been re edited with a view to sensitivity? and in recent times, the most clear example has been roald dahl, which puffin books thought it was going to re offer to the public with many
of mariupol has been condemned by ukraine. an aide to president zelensky called the russian president, a criminal returning to the crime scene. it was the first time mr putin had been to a newly occupied ukrainian territory. now on bbc news hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i m stephen sackur. in a world fixated with the unstoppable march of the digital revolution, it s kind of refreshing to look at what s happening in the old school business of selling books. ink on paper has not been eliminated by the rise of the e book, and the good old bricks and mortar bookshop hasn t been wiped out by online shopping. my guest today, james daunt, boss of a growing bookshop empire, is a leader of this counter revolution. he s made buying physical books cool on both