It’s a truth universally acknowledged that books are have the power to uplift, motivate and inspire you, but for some, that power is seen as dangerous.

What one person reads as vivid, poignant and moving, another sees as violent, perverse or politically dubious. Thus, book banning has existed from the beginning of time and a quick flick through any well-stocked bookshelf will reveal titles that, at one point or another, have been subject to censorship.

And some books are banned for the most extraordinary of reasons. A Catholic school in Nashville, Tennessee, has just removed JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series from its library. The Tennessean published extracts of an email from Reverend Dan Reehil, a pastor at the school, in which he said the series was banned because “the curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text”.