The Reading Agency, which runs the annual event going ahead on Thursday in curtailed form, says there has been a particular spike among younger readers

Brits are turning to books in lockdown, with one in three reading more since Boris Johnson told the country on 23 March to stay at home, according to a new survey.

Marking the annual World Book Night on Thursday, the survey from the Reading Agency of more than 2,000 people in the UK found that 31% were reading more since lockdown began, with the charity noting a “particular spike”, of 45%, among young people aged between 18 and 24.

“It takes me to another, better place and allows me to escape the current situation for a while,” one 67-year-old female respondent told the Reading Agency.

Total physical book sales in the UK jumped 6% in the week before the national lockdown began, with sales monitor Nielsen BookScan noting a 35% week-on-week boost for paperback fiction. Adult non-fiction, however, was down by 13%, as readers sought solace in imaginary worlds. That same week, Waterstones, the UK’s biggest book chain, reported that its online sales were up by 400% week-on-week.

The survey is also backed up by figures from libraries around Britain. Although branches are shut, there has been a boom in registrations, according to the Local Government Association, with Hampshire county council reporting a 770% increase in new digital users, Cornwall a 630% increase and Hertfordshire an increase of 332%.

A curtailed version of World Book Night will kick off on Thursday night, as the annual giveaway of thousands of titles – which this year ranges from Raynor Winn’s memoir The Salt Path to Angie Thomas’s young adult novel On the Come Up – has been postponed. More than 50,000 books had been set to be distributed to prisons, hospitals, youth centres, care homes and mental health groups, but following government advice this will now take place later in the year. Instead, 5,000 free audiobooks will be sent to members of the public for the first time.

The Reading Agency, which runs World Book Night, is holding a Reading Hour from 7 to 8pm BST on Thursday, and inviting the country to spend the time reading with family, by themselves, or discussing books online using the hashtag #ReadingHour.

One contributor will be the novelist Patrick Gale, who is reading Anne Enright’s “compelling and utterly convincing” Actress. “Lockdown is not making me read more – I still read in bed every night – but it seems to be making me pay closer attention,” said Gale.

“I haven’t turned out all my cupboards during lockdown. I haven’t baked a single cake. I haven’t learnt a new language,” said children’s author Jacqueline Wilson. “But I’ve read a great deal, and very randomly. I’ve read two Dickens, The Secret Garden, a new Anne Tyler and an old favourite, an Adam Mars Jones, Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things, and a brilliant new biography of the Beatles.”

“I would have thought I’d be in need of comfort reading, but instead I’m looking for answers in books in a way I haven’t for years,” said author Sadie Jones, who is reading Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, which was shortlisted for the Women’s prize for fiction this week. Jones called it “a wonderful book in many ways, not least the fresh, vital evocation of 16th century, a time just like ours, when the tiniest microbe could end a beloved human life, and change the course of millions”.

World Book Night, which was set up to inspire people to read more, is also asking readers to recommend or send a book to a friend.

“This year’s World Book Night celebrations provide the perfect opportunity to showcase the proven power of reading to connect people. Never has this connectivity been needed more than at this anxious time of social distancing,” said the Reading Agency’s Debbie Hicks.