There's at least one man who won't be surprised by the news that the best-known French bookshop in the USA, the Librairie de France in New York's Rockefeller Centre, will close next September. That man is Horace Engdahl, the Nobel literature prize's permanent secretary who described American writing as "too isolated, too insular" in an inflammatory interview last autumn. Engdahl has since resigned from the position, but not before his comments raised the ire of Americans keen to protest that the US was in fact very inclusive of world culture.

The closure of the Librairie de France – which describes itself as the only one of its kind in the US – after 73 years is down to a leap in rent and to online competition; as Le Figaro reports, a book costing $20 in the shop would be available for five times less via amazon.com.

But is it a sign of the dying throes of the Bush era, or an indication of what's to come? Only time will tell.