THE BOOK is a marker of European recovery from the Dark Ages when priests and assorted clergymen had a monopoly on reading and writing. However, literacy spread from the top down once nobility and gentry regarded it as a good thing. Two Kings were highly literate - Alfred of Wessex and Henry I of the Norman dynasty. Both were youngest sons who had no prospect of inheritance; so they were earmarked for the church and educated accordingly. Both became kings by chance.