BOOKS, THE SPREAD OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND THE WORLD WIDE WEB

129 million books were sold last year in Britain through bookshops and high street outlets. The figure is staggering even though it includes school text books. It indicates that people do still read books despite the education elite's determination to stop them by trying to offload the classics and Shakespeare from the state school curriculum.

Of course many of those books are not worth reading - airport novels, celebrity books and Mills and Boon - but the figures show that though many do turn to sites like this one on the Internet, the future is still with the book. Alarm in publishing circles at books published on the net appears to be unfounded as it has not been a great success. A famous writer brought a book out on the net recently, but it is still coming out in book form this year. Readers want the sight and feel of a proper book. They want to handle it.

What is also encouraging is that English is fast becoming the world's favourite language. Michael Binyon recently pointed out (The Times, February 21, 2001, "A Russian revolution") that a new survey by the European Commission reveals that English is overwhelmingly the dominant second language in the European Union, with more than one in three of Europe's 350 million people speaking it. Fewer than one in ten speaks French, and even the French agree that mastery of their neighbour's tongue is essential in today's world.

The greatest change of all is taking place in Russia. President Putin himself is one of thousands of middle-aged Russians finding that they cannot get by without it. Almost all schoolteachers and language lecturers are supplementing their pay by giving private lessons, for without a knowledge of English the prospects of getting a good job are almost nil. Young people are delving into music, magazines and the Internet to pick up what they can of today's jargon.

Michael Binyon left university in 1967 and taught English for the British Council in Minsk. Then there existed a few academics who could speak a stilted English but there was not much interest in the language. What a change today. From Sakhalin in the east to St Petersburg in the west, Russians are flocking to British Council centres to enrol in courses. President Putin has engaged a private tutor for early morning lessons and hopes to speak enough English to talk to President Bush without an interpreter.

Russians today travel abroad in their thousands and young Russians meet foreigners all the time. Three out of four of the four million pupils in Russian schools are learning English. For example, School No 2 in Pravda, a small town just outside Moscow, offers English at all levels. In a few months it is to be hooked up to the Internet, but it already has a link with Prendergast, a girl's school in Lewisham. The headmistress encourages every link with the west.

In some regions local governors are so keen to boost the prospects for foreign investment that they are offering the British Council rent-free accommodation in city-centres. British business is also involved: BP, with a big presence in Russia, heavily underwrote the recent opening of centres in Irkutsk and Sakhalin.

The demand is highest in Moscow. Young men and women wanting to become lawyers, traders, bankers, computer programmers or Internet operators, all have to speak English virtually flawlessly. Russia has a tradition of linguistic excellence, and as so few people outside Russia speak Russian they want to speak English because conducting business through interpreters is cumbersome. Dozens of private English schools have sprung up, while the British Council's own school has a huge turnover: 400 students every eight weeks, 2,400 a year. The Council has also been contracted to teach hundreds of serving and former Russian Army officers enough English to give them a headstart in civilian life instead of leaving them jobless and embittered. Britain's Military of Defence pays for this. More than 15,000 Russians are now studying in Britain compared with a few hundred in Mikhail Gorbachev's time.

There is the steady spread of the Reformed faith into Russia with more annual conferences in different parts of the country. In the last few years amongst the books translated into Russian have been "The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment", Tedd Tripp's "Shepherding a Child's Heart" and the Shorter Catechism. This is for those who cannot read English, but every Russian pastor must now make it a priority to learn English and gain access to the rich resources of Christian literature now in superabundance.

As soon as this article appears on the Banner of Truth website it will be picked up and combed by scores of search engines. The references to every Russian town and every person named will be recorded and in the future whenever someone is searching for, say, the British Council in Russia, or Sakhalin or Pravda then this humble piece will be offered to them in its place on the Banner of Truth website.

One has been staggered with the growth of visitors to our weekly sermons printed on our church website. This was started two and a half years ago, and a year ago a thousand people a week was visiting it. Today two and a half thousand people a week visit it and download the sermons from all over the globe. How many will there be in another year? Knowledge of the English language is giving unprecedented opportunities for the spread of the gospel in books and on the net throughout the world. One reads the new Banner of Truth catalogue and one's heart leaps for joy at the books now being offered to the world. If you desire to obtain a free copy please contact the Banner of Truth office.

GEOFF THOMAS