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.
Denne historien er fra November 04, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra November 04, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
