Why non-fiction books need their indexes

I'm coming across increasing numbers of new non-fiction books that lack an index. No doubt it's done to save costs, but I wonder if it's a false economy.

Not only is a book without an index less satisfactory after you've bought it, but that lack makes you less likely to buy it in the first place.

I can't be the only person who, faced with a promising new title in a bookshop, turns to the index and looks up a couple of relevant topics I know something about. What the books says about them gives me an idea of the author's thoroughness, judgement and originality.

Without an index it's much harder to gain this insight, which makes an impulse purchase less likely.

Besides, the absence of an index means there are none of the juxtaposed entries I so enjoy.

The other day I turned up a Liberal Democrat Voice post from 2010 in which a number of bloggers made their choice of Christmas books.

My choice was Electric Eden by Rob Young, which is a history of the folk rock genre. I ended by saying:

The book has a wonderfully complete discography to guide your own exploration of folk and folk rock, and the most engrossing index I have ever come across. Richard Jefferies stands next to Jefferson Starship. Traffic next to Thomas Traherne. Steve Winwood next to Gerrard Winstanley, It reads like notes towards my own vision of Britain.

But the real master of unlikely couplings in indexes is Mike Brearley. In included a collection of finest work in one of my JCPCP columns:

• Archer, Jofra/Aristides the Just;
• Bowlby, John/Boycott, Geoff; 
• counter-transference/Cowdrey, Colin;
• Gower, David/Gramsci, Antonio;
• idée fixe/Illingworth, Ray;
• Muralitharan, Muttiah/Murdoch, Iris;
• Snow, C.P./Snow, John;
• Thomson, Jeff/Thorndike, Sybil;
• Trueman, Fred/Trump, Donald;
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig/Woakes, Chris.

The Joy of Six 1503

Marcus Hughes on the many problems the Welsh government must overcome in achieving its laudable aim of removing private profit from the care system. "The anxiety inducing question from those working in the sector is what happens if local authority and not-for-profit provision can’t replace that offered by the private sector in time? Finding places for some young people is already a challenge even with the current options available." 

"Could the bellicose, belligerent and braying Hegseth – with his Crusader tattoos, his disdain for diplomacy, and his evident taste for violent domination – have convinced Trump to start a war to complete the unfinished business of the Crusades?" Julia Carrie Wong reveals the militant Christian theology animating the US attack on Iran

Hannah Sharland reports on fears that the government's transport strategy will not see the improvements for disabled travellers that were promised.

"Standing at 6ft 2in, with an imposing physique and a razor-scarred face, she was a Black, gay multi-instrumentalist who refused to let a racist society or a rapacious industry confine her. Thornton should be ranked alongside the likes of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, but instead she is little more than a footnote in the histories of Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin as the original voice behind songs they would make famous." Garth Cartwright celebrates Big Mama Thornton.

"For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he." A London Inheritance takes us to St Mary's, Putney, where the Putney Debates took place in 1647. 

Simon Hughes (not that one) remembers Channel 4's years of covering test cricket – they gave us Geoffrey Boycott without the tiresome public-school teasing of him by Jonathan Agnew: "Our principle aim was to make cricket coverage more interesting and informative: to tell ‘why’ as well as ‘what’. Part of our motivation came from people who said they often watched cricket on the TV but turned the sound off and listened to the radio commentary. We wanted our content to be so intriguing viewers would turn the sound up."

Geoffrey Boycott on Parkinson before the sticks of rhubarb

As far as I can make out, this interview was screened on 3 September 1977. This other guests on the programme were James Stewart and Elkie Brooks, though she may just have sung.

That summer Boycott had ended his self-imposed exile from test cricket, played three tests for England, scored 442 runs in 5 innings (at an average of 147.33, and helped us win back the Ashes. The man could play.

Here he is very serious, with no sticks of rhubarb or mothers' pinafores. This is the Boycott who was to become sought as a batting coach by teams all around the world.

I always found Jon Agnew's bating of Boycott on Test Match Special tedious beyond belief. Ed Smith, by contrast, new how to draw him out and get him talking about the technicalities of batting, which was really interesting.

At one time, incidentally, Sir Geoffrey and Michael Parkinson were rivals for an opening birth in the Barnsley first XI. The other opener was Dickie Bird.