WHEN I was confirmed 30 years ago, my godfather admitted, full of shame, that he’d completely forgotten I was his godson. He made up for it in spades with his confirmation present: a year’s membership to the London Library, SW1, the greatest lending library in the world, which has thankfully re-opened after the grim days of lockdown.
Tucked into the north-west corner of St James’s Square, the London Library’s tall, thin façade—not unlike the spine of a book—looks rather puny next to the Palladian palazzi in one of London’s earliest garden squares, founded in 1661.
But appearances can be deceptive. Behind that etiolated, late-Victorian exterior, there stretches a rabbit warren of bookshelves, reading rooms and higgledy-piggledy extensions. Today, the library has more than one million books, covering 2,000 subjects in 55 different languages. The books range from 1500 to modern times, together with bound copies of some 2,000 periodicals dating from 1699 to the present day.
There’s something magical about the fact that you can take all of these books out. And the fact that you’re allowed to keep them for as long as you like—or until another member wants the book you’ve taken out. I’ve had London Library books with their handsome bookplates on the cover on my shelves at home for years at a time. That’s why historian Thomas Carlyle founded the library in 1841 —because, at that time, there were no lending libraries in London and state-funded ones did not yet exist.
この記事は Country Life UK の November 04, 2020 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は Country Life UK の November 04, 2020 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Give it some stick
Galloping through the imagination, competitive hobby-horsing is a gymnastic sport on the rise in Britain, discovers Sybilla Hart
Paper escapes
Steven King selects his best travel books of 2024
For love, not money
This year may have marked the end of brag-art’, bought merely to show off one’s wealth. It’s time for a return to looking for connoisseurship, beauty and taste
Mary I: more bruised than bloody
Cast as a sanguinary tyrant, our first Queen Regnant may not deserve her brutal reputation, believes Geoffrey Munn
A love supreme
Art brought together 19th-century Norwich couple Joseph and Emily Stannard, who shared a passion for painting, but their destiny would be dramatically different
Private views
One of the best ways-often the only way-to visit the finest privately owned gardens in the country is by joining an exclusive tour. Non Morris does exactly that
Shhhhhh...
THERE is great delight to be had poring over the front pages of COUNTRY LIFE each week, dreaming of what life would be like in a Scottish castle (so reasonably priced, but do bear in mind the midges) or a townhouse in London’s Eaton Square (worth a king’s ransom, but, oh dear, the traffic) or perhaps that cottage in the Cotswolds (if you don’t mind standing next to Hollywood A-listers in the queue at Daylesford). The estate agent’s particulars will give you details of acreage, proximity to schools and railway stations, but never—no, never—an indication of noise levels.
Mission impossible
Rubble and ruin were all that remained of the early-19th-century Villa Frere and its gardens, planted by the English diplomat John Hookham Frere, until a group of dedicated volunteers came to its rescue. Josephine Tyndale-Biscoe tells the story
When a perfect storm hits
Weather, wars, elections and financial uncertainty all conspired against high-end house sales this year, but there were still some spectacular deals
Give the dog a bone
Man's best friend still needs to eat like its Lupus forebears, believes Jonathan Self, when it's not guarding food, greeting us or destroying our upholstery, of course
