Good news for booksellers: books, it seems, are what you now give to the couples with everything.

Prime among this happy group are the British journalist Simon Sebag Montefiore ("Sebag" to his friends) and Santa Palmer-Tomkinson, two of the glittering beacons of London high society, who were married in London last Thursday. They apparently lodged a wedding-gift list at the shop of Chelsea bookseller Peter Harrington.

But we are not speaking of Arrow paperbacks or even Penguin Modern Classics. Rare books, first editions and antiquarian volumes are the desired objects. If you wish to contribute to Sebag and Santa's connubial bliss, you are probably too late to pick up a leather-bound first edition of George Orwell's 1984 for a mere £120 or so, and you may even find that the only thing left on the dear couple's list is a first edition of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, priced at something between £10,000 and £20,000.

Perhaps an entire set of modern Everyman editions might prove acceptable: I understand that Mick Jagger, one of the high priests of today's high society, has such a set in each of his houses.

But be very careful if tempted to select a book which is not on the list. In these exalted social circles you are quite likely to commit an unforgivable gaffe by implying that the couple's literary tastes are not sufficiently far-reaching, or as sophisticated as your own.

Only if you have complete faith in the jauntiness of your imagination, and select perhaps a bedraggled bunch of worn Ladybird readers ("How charming!"), or first-draft Elmore Leonards, or Gore Vidal manuscripts, or Irvine Welsh juvenilia, can you hope to carry it off.

And do not worry that your expensive gifts are destined to linger admired but untouched on the elegant cedar shelving. Sebag and Santa are keen readers, and there is no question of the books being merely ornamental. "Of course, I'm going to read the books", says Sebag, "I just won't be reading any of them in the bath".

That's good to know, though it's a little unsettling to learn that a 33-year-old journalist has not already read 1984, or indeed Pride and Prejudice. Perhaps it is rereading he has in mind. Martin Goff, director of the antiquarian bookseller Henry Southeran Ltd, in Piccadilly, naturally approves of the choice of rare books as engagement or wedding presents: "The dinner service will get broken, the towels worn, but the book will increase in value."

Not necessarily. This concept of rare books as necessarily superior items in themselves is dubious. It unfortunately goes hand in hand with the notion of the antiquarian bookseller as a harmless old soul interested only in literature and loath to part with any of his treasures, no matter what the price.

This idea was given credence in the film based on the true-life relationship in the early 1950s between the American writer Helene Hanff and Frank Doel, manager of the London bookshop at 84 Charing Cross Road, the address which gave the film (and before that, the book and the stage play) its title.

In fact, though not in the film, Hanff and Doel never met. But friends who did meet him told her they would not have had anything in common: "He was interested in the monetary value of books, while I bought them for the literature"

The bookshop (now long gone) was called Marks & Co, and Leo Marks, son of the proprietor, has recalled the family business as a cut-throat affair, because of the vicious rivalry which characterised antiquarian book-selling in post-war London.

Sharp practice was rife: the fourth floor of 84 Charing Cross Road, for example, contained a secret department known as "Spare Parts". According to Leo Marks, "If a book came in because it had a plate missing, they'd find a similar plate, shove it in, and sell it off as a perfect copy. It was a very specialised part of the business."

Santa and Sebag, however, are no fools. "We thought it would be fun to build up a library rather than have too many pots and pans," says Sebag: "But we have also got another list, at the General Trading Company, for household goods."

This is a reassuring decision. It augurs well for a good old-fashioned marriage where pots and pans are at least as important as books, if not a lot more so. Had I been on Simon and Santa's invitation list (along with Charles and Camilla) I would have ignored their rare book requests and popped down to the General Trading Company to pick them out an antiquarian Fanny Cradock frying pan, a first-edition Delia Smith bain-marie or perhaps a signed set of early Sabatier knives.