Last weekend I had cause to be at Mirfield Library to give a talk on books and writing and so forth - which was lucky, given it was a library. Probably wouldn't have gone down well in a foundry, say, or at in illegal dog-fighting ring.

I'd been invited there because it was National Libraries Day, and authors from the surrounding area where being co-opted to share their love of books, what goes into writing one, and encouraging people to read more of them.

Which is something, as you can probably imagine, I heartily agree with.

What is less edifying is the fact that for some insane reason, some local authorities seem to view funding local libraries as an optional extra, which they can decide not to do.

No. No, these people are wrong. As wrong as a wrong-thing from Wrongland. Because reading, and nurturing the joy that can be had from books, is just not optional. And there's no better place to do that than in a library.

When you walk into a library, you are not just walking into a building. You are entering a portal to other worlds. You are on the doorstep to Narnia, or Mars, or the trenches of the Somme, or New York or Mumbai or Beijing. Of your own doorstep. You are standing on the brink of discovery, of knowledge, of entertainment, of joy.

And you are getting it all for free.

Ask any writer, and they will tell you that they were made in a library. My library, my own gateway to countless worlds, was a mobile library, that used to visit our street every Thursday teatime. I would go every week, getting as many books as my card would allow, and the following Thursday I would be waiting, books read, to exchange them for fresh ones which would widen my world even further.

And it never cost me a penny.

Perhaps that's the problem for local councils who are considering slashing library funding, closing libraries. Maybe all they see is that they are pouring money into a facility that garners no returns.

Well, they'd be wrong once again. Because what people get from libraries can't have a price put upon it. They get pleasure and learning, excitement and thrills. Their knowledge of the world, of human nature, is expanded in ways big and small.

A child who grows up with books is never short of something to do, always has a friend at hand, learns about who they are and their place in the world, in the universe.

And some people want to take this away. They want to cut funding, close down libraries. They want to make it if you want to read, then you have to go and buy a book. They want to un-democratise reading, make it purely for those who can afford to spend the money on it.

They must be stopped. Libraries should be, and often are, at the heart of your communities. Don't let anyone take them away from you.