MAGAZINE AUTUMN 2018 ISSUE 41
The Georgian architect ‘most in vogue’ Michael Dunne on the legacy of James Gibbs
£3.50
Hidden Corners
‘They faced death without flinching’
The Library’s Collection of the Imperial Russian Historical Society is discovered by Virginia Rounding
Diane Atkinson on the suffragette banner which tells the story of the militant movement
ADA LOVELACE – LUIGI MENABREA Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented By Charles Babbage, with notes by the translator Ada Lovelace London, 1843 Estimate £6,000–8,000
Auction London 18 & 19 September 2018
EXHIBITION FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC 14 – 17 SEPTEMBER 34–35 NEW BOND STREET, LONDON W1A 2AA ENQUIRIES +44 (0)20 7293 5893 CHARLOTTE.MILLER@SOTHEBYS.COM SOTHEBYS.COM/TOMASH #SOTHEBYSBOOKS
DOWNLOAD SOTHEBY’S APP FOLLOW US @SOTHEBYS
Books & Works on Paper Travel, Natural History & Sport
26 SEPTEMBER
A collection of 24 illustrations depicting silk production and birds of China on printed and hand-coloured pith paper, with a further 12 drawn and hand-coloured on natural leaves featuring the growing and cultivation of leaves for tea [Canton: circa 1840] Estimate £600 - £800
Books & Works on Paper
28 NOVEMBER
Contact Head of Department Clive Moss clive.moss@chiswickauctions.co.uk
+44 (0)20 8992 4442 | chiswickauctions.co.uk 1 Colville Road, London W3 8BL | 127 Fulham Road, London SW3 6RT
Postgraduate study
in the humanities at the University of London The School of Advanced Study at the University of London brings together nine internationally renowned research institutes to form the UK’s national centre for the support and promotion of research in the humanities. The School offers full- and part-time master’s and research degrees in its specialist areas, some of which are available via distance learning.
MA • MRes • LLM • MPhil • PhD
sas.ac.uk/study 4 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
Art history • Classics • Commonwealth studies Digital humanities • English and American literature History and historical research Human rights • Latin American studies Law • Modern languages
The London Library Magazine / issue 41
14 Virginia Rounding investigates the Library’s Collection of the Imperial Russian Historical Society (1867–1916), a unique archive of documents for scholars of Russian history, which includes the revealing correspondence between Catherine the Great and her confidant Baron Melchior von Grimm.
Contents 7 FROM THE chairman 8 Contributors V. Vasnetzov’s portrait of Pyotr Andreyevich Vyazemsky, a founder of the Imperial Russian Historical Society. Image © Alamy Stock Photo.
17
Dan Jones’s reading list at the Library for his book on the history of the world through photography, a collaboration with Marina Amaral
13 MY DISCOVERY A Treatise on Roads by Henry Parnell was an unexpected find for Julian Glover in Science & Miscellaneous
Our series on historic independent libraries continues with Jane Riley looking back at the 250-year history of Leeds Library.
14 hidden corners Reading Room, Leeds Library.
The Collection of the Imperial Russian Historical Society by Virginia Rounding
17 independent library series
18
Jane Riley on the Leeds Library, founded in 1768
18 the Georgian architect ‘most in vogue’
From the London landmarks of St Martinin-the Fields and St Mary-le-Strand, to the Fellows’ Building at King’s College in Cambridge and the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, James Gibbs’s commissions reflect the architect’s reputation during the early Georgian period. Michael Dunne applauds his achievements.
Michael Dunne celebrates the work of the architect James Gibbs
22 ‘they faced death without flinching’
St Mary-le-Strand, consecrated 1723, by James Gibbs. Photograph © Angelo Hornak.
The banner that bears the names of suffragette activists is described by Diane Atkinson
26 MEMBERS’ NEWS
22 Diane Atkinson explores the fascinating story behind a suffragette banner made by the Glasgow artist Ann Macbeth to record the names of 80 women who belonged to the militant Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and suffered for the cause.
10 BEHIND THE BOOK
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, one of the leading members of the WSPU. Private collection.
p
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 5
Valentine Dobrée (1894-1974) Composition. Collage and gouache. c.1931. Exh: ‘Valentine Dobrée’, University of Leeds, 2000 . 24x30.25 inches.
T W E N T I E T H C E N T U RY W O R K S O N PA P E R 2 0 th S E P T E M B E R - 2 0 th O C T O B E R 2 0 1 8
ABBOTT and HOLDER 3 0 M u s eu m Str eet, L o n do n WC 1 A 1 L H | 0 2 0 7637 3981 | g aller y@abbottandholder.co.uk | www.abbottandholder.co.uk
LL-Autumn 2018.indd 1
6 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
27/07/2018 13:19
p from the chairman
On the cover
Radcliffe Camera, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, 1737–47, by James Gibbs. Photograph © Angelo Hornak.
With the Annual Report now available and reviewed in this issue, it is customary for the Chairman to introduce the autumn edition of the magazine and I am very pleased to welcome you to it. It contains a fascinating range of articles by Library members. Diane Atkinson reveals details of the lives of the suffragettes, which is also the subject of her latest book and of a highly engaging talk she gave at the Library in July as part of our public events series. Michael Dunne explores the works of the influential Georgian architect James Gibbs, designer of such notable buildings as the Radcliffe Camera and St Martin-in-the-Fields among many others. Virginia Rounding chances upon the Library’s remarkable Collection of the Imperial Russian Historical Society, while Dan Jones reveals some of the titles on photography and history on the shelves that have informed his book, The Colour of Time. Julian Glover discovers that the nineteenth-century politician Lord Congleton wrote an obscure and forgotten treatise on roads, and we celebrate the 250th anniversary this year of one of our closest independent library cousins, the Leeds Library. In Members’ News our focus is very much on matters financial and, as we publish our Annual Report and Accounts, our treasurer Philip Broadley reviews the financial year 2017– 2018. The result for the year is largely flat, with the Library showing a small overall surplus of £147k. The underlying picture shows that we are continuing to have a substantial operating deficit, which we must reduce in order to secure the longer-term financial viability of the Library. I wrote last year that membership remains vital to us and that it is important that we attract more members to help improve our operating results. This remains true, and at the same time we must continue to focus on fundraising so that we can build up our restricted, unrestricted and endowment funds. I am proud to publish the list of this year’s donors and supporters whose help is so important to us, and thank them for their generosity. Members’ News also includes a fond reflection on the life of one of the Library’s great friends, John Julius Norwich, a longstanding Library member and Vice-President. He carried on writing until the end of his life and many of his books were written here in his beloved London Library. He will be sorely missed.
Howard Davies Chairman
Published on behalf of The London Library by Royal Academy Enterprises Ltd. Colour reproduction by adtec. Printed by Tradewinds London. Published 7 September 2018 © 2018 The London Library. ISSN 2398-4201. The opinions in this particular publication do not necessarily reflect the views of The London Library. All reasonable attempts have been made to clear copyright before publication.
Editorial Publisher Jane Grylls Editor Mary Scott Design and production Catherine Cartwright Picture research Catherine Cartwright
Editorial committee Julian Lloyd Helen O’Neill Peter Parker Philip Spedding Erica Wagner
Advertising Jane Grylls 020 7300 5661 Charlotte Burgess 020 7300 5675 Communications Department, The London Library 020 7766 4704
Magazine feedback and editorial enquiries should be addressed to magazine@londonlibrary.co.uk THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 7
CONTRIBUTORS
Bodleian Library Publishing
NEW BOOKS
The Making of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Compelling and innovative illustrated biography of the novel for all those fascinated by its essential, brilliant chaos.
Diane Atkinson is the author of Rise Up, Women! The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes (2018). She is a historian and biographer and has consulted on TV documentaries and taken part in numerous radio broadcasts. Her titles include Elsie and Mairi Go To War: Two Remarkable Women on the Western Front (2009) and The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton (2012). joined the library in 1975
Michael Dunne, who lives in Brighton, taught US history and international relations at the University of Sussex, specialising in the politics of international law. His most recent writings have been on British relations with the EU and the history of American populism. Now retired, he has resumed his earlier interests in languages and architecture.
It’s All Greek: Borrowed Words and their Histories Tells the stories behind more than 250 words derived from ancient Greek, tracing their route into English.
Julian Glover joined the library in 1998
9781851245055 HB £12.99 October 2018
Julian Glover OBE is a journalist and writer. He is Associate Editor of the London Evening Standard and is leading a review into the future of National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty for the government. Previously a columnist for the Guardian, in 2011 he was appointed chief speechwriter to David Cameron. He is the author of Man of Iron: Thomas Telford and the Building of Britain (2017).
The Real McCoy and 149 Other Eponyms Reveals the origins of 150 eponyms and describes the fascinating people after whom they are named – the perfect addition to any wordsmith’s bookshelf!
Dan Jones
joined the library in 2017
Dan Jones is a historian and broadcaster. His books include the New York Times bestsellers The Templars (2017) and The Plantagenets (2012). He has written and presented dozens of TV programmes, including Secrets of Great British Castles. His award-winning journalism appears in publications such as the Sunday Times. He is a columnist for the London Evening Standard.
9781851244980 HB £9.99 October 2018 The Devil’s Dictionary New edition of this irreverent and provocative satirical dictionary. 9781851245079 HB £12.99
Jane Riley
October 2018
Jane Riley started her career in the civil service, but after many years of penpushing fulfilled her childhood dream of becoming a librarian by joining the staff of the Leeds Library in 2002. Now she has the great privilege of welcoming members and visitors to the Library’s city centre location. Unsurprisingly, her hobbies include reading books, buying books, smelling books and visiting bookshops.
Martin Lister and his Remarkable Daughters: The Art of Science in the Seventeenth Century ‘The extraordinary and compelling story of how a scientific father and his two artistic daughters created the first comprehensive, illustrated account of the biology of molluscs.’ – T.R. Birkhead
Virginia Rounding joined the library in 1992
9781851244898 HB £25.00
October 2018
8 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
joined the library in 1984
Michael Dunne
9781851244867 PB with flaps £12.99 September 2018
FREE CATALOGUE publishing@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Diane Atkinson
ORDER FROM bodleianshop.co.uk
Virginia Rounding’s most recent book is The Burning Time: The Story of the Smithfield Martyrs (2017). Her previous books include Nicky and Alix (2011), Catherine the Great (2006) and Grandes Horizontales (2003). Between 2008 and 2011 she was the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Writer Matt Hartley Director Adele Thomas GLOBE THEATRE 15 September – 13 October 2018 700 TICKETS AT £5 FOR EVERY PERFORMANCE
A new play about the importance of community and one village’s story in the wake of the devastating 1665 plague.
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 9
Behind the
Book
‘
Dan Jones found inspiration in S. Photography and Topography for his latest book, an illustrated world history produced in conjunction with Brazilian artist Marina Amaral
’
Dan Jones and Marina Amaral’s The Colour of Time: A New History of the World, 1850–1960 (Apollo, 2018).
Collaborating with the digital historical artist Marina Amaral on The Colour of Time meant ranging across a century of global history from the Crimean War to the Cold War, while also immersing myself in the history of photography. The London Library has splendid collections covering both these areas. The History of Photography by Helmut Gernsheim (London and Oxford 1955, revd edn 1969). S. Photography, 4to. Approaching a history of the world through photography required an understanding of the history of the medium, from the camera obscura of antiquity to the popularisation of the daguerreotype in the 1830s and beyond. This large volume is a little dated now, but is full of insights into the technological advances of the camera in the nineteenth century and into the men and women who used it across the disciplines of art, portraiture and journalism. All the Mighty World: The Photographs of Roger Fenton, 1852– 1860, exh. cat. by Gordon Baldwin, Malcolm Daniel and Sarah Greenough (London and New Haven 2004). S. Photography, folio, extra large. The first image in our book is a portrait of the Victorian photographer Roger Fenton sitting aboard his horse-drawn mobile darkroom, a vehicle he adapted from a wine-merchant’s wagon. Fenton took it to the Crimea during the 1850s and captured some of the first and finest photographs of men and women at war. There is a fine selection in this catalogue for an exhibition whose venues included The Met and Tate Britain. Fenton’s portraits are stiff-backed and bloodless but technically superb and still very moving today.
10 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
Julia Margaret Cameron: Photographs to Electrify You With Delight and Startle the World, exh. cat. by Marta Weiss (London 2015). S. Photography, 4to. Julia Margaret Cameron pioneered photographic portraiture as an art form, producing images of her friends and relatives (including her neighbour Alfred Tennyson) in playful poses drawn from classical and medieval mythology. Much of her work is owned by the Victoria and Albert Museum; this book is a splendid, scholarly catalogue which accompanied an exhibition at the museum in 2015 to mark the bicentenary of her birth. With Scott to the Pole: The Terra Nova expedition, 1910–1913 by Herbert George Ponting (London 2004). T. Arctic & Antarctic, folio, extra large. The photographer Herbert Ponting travelled to Antarctica with Robert Falcon Scott on the Terra Nova expedition. Unlike Scott he came home, bringing with him hundreds of plates detailing the harsh, beautiful ice-desert at the southern end of the earth. His images were intended to form the basis of a show that would cover some of the costs of Scott’s adventure. The tragic end to the expedition meant that they gained a historical importance far outstripping their original purpose, and they are now owned by the Scott Polar Research Institute. Collected here they are both fascinating and faintly macabre.
Adolf Hitler: Faces of a Dictator by Heinrich Hoffmann and Jochen von Lang, introduction by Constantine FitzGibbon (London 1970). Biog. Hitler, 4to. It would be unthinkable to produce a volume of photographs of world history without including the bizarre, unmistakable likeness of Hitler. The challenge is to present the Führer in an unfamiliar light; we selected an image showing the back of his head during a rally at Nuremburg, which turned the focus on to the thousands of Nazi party supporters facing him. Essential to researching this topic were the images of Hitler’s personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, many of which are contained in this book. The Great ‘Life’ Photographers by John Loengard and Gordon Parks (London 2004). S. Photography, 4to. When the American pictorial weekly magazine Life launched in 1936, it changed popular photography for good. Staff photographers, including Alfred Eisenstaedt, Robert Capa and Margaret Bourke-White, became superstars, charting war, celebrity and society and producing famous images such as Eisenstaedt’s portrait of a couple kissing in Times Square on VJ Day. I used this excellent compilation to guide me through the vast Life archives, and to hunt down details of the photographers’ personal reminiscences, dispatched from the front lines of modern history.
Part-time study with Oxford Our 2018/19 programme of short courses is now online • online courses • weekend lectures • weekly classes • summer schools • continuing professional development • undergraduate and postgraduate award programmes
@OxfordConted www.conted.ox.ac.uk/shortcourses2018
Square miles and circle lines Travel the London Days network From the hidden history of London’s Underground, to an elevated appreciation of the city skyline, Martin Randall Travel’s London Days offer fresh perspective and deeper insight, whether you’re a Londoner or a visitor to the capital.
Spend the day getting to know a different side of London exploring its historical and artistic riches in the company of our experts.
‘The route chosen revealed parts of London completely unknown to me and the unfamiliar vistas of familiar landmarks was a joy.’
Contact us: +44 (0)20 8742 3355 | martinrandall.com/london-days
Over 40 itineraries, including: London’s Underground Railway The London Backstreet Walk The Ever-Changing City Skyline Great Railway Termini Seven Churches & a Synagogue Caravaggio & Rembrandt The Italian Renaissance
ABTA Y6050 | AITO 5085
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 11
THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF LONDON Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BE | www.sal.org.uk/events
FREE PUBLIC LECTURES All lectures are free, booking is recommended (1-2pm)
04 SEP
Coastal Heritage Under Threat: CITiZAN
23 OCT
The Prittlewell Prince
Gustav Milne, FSA
Ian Blair and Prof Christopher Scull, FSA
06 NOV
Seeing Milton’s Voice Prof Howard J. M. Hanley, FSA
GUIDED PUBLIC TOURS Dates: 4 Sep, 23 Oct & 6 Nov (10.30-12.00) Explore the history of the Society and learn more about our library and collections, including our fine collection of Tudor portraits. (£10)
OPEN HOUSE LONDON 22 September: Discover the Burlington House courtyard.
London Library - September (Landscape).indd 1
Q. What do Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Joyce and Ivy Compton-Burnett have in common?
10/05/2018 16:46:42
A. They all received grants from the Royal Literary Fund.
Royal Literary Fund Registered Charity no. 219952
12 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
MY DISCOVERY A Treatise on Roads by henry parnell Julian Glover on finding an obscure book by a Member of Parliament in Science & Miscellaneous On 10 June 1842 the Times reported a ‘melancholy event’ . A politician, Lord Congleton, had hanged himself in his bedroom and been found by his valet after failing to come down to breakfast. The peer ‘occasionally took a prominent part in public affairs; but he was neither a frequent nor an agreeable speaker, ’ the paper noted, rather sourly. History soon forgot him: if Sir Henry Parnell (as he was called before his ennoblement) is remembered at all, it is as the modestly reformist Irish ancestor of the more famous and more radical Charles Parnell (1846–91). I came across Henry Parnell unexpectedly, in the early weeks of my research into the life of the great Georgian engineer Thomas Telford, who built some of Britain’s best roads among much else, for my book Man of Iron: Thomas Telford and the Building of Britain (2017). Roaming the stacks in Science & Miscellaneous, I found the small section under the subject heading ‘S. Roads’ and began to plough through the titles. One stood out, a second edition from 1838 of a book by Parnell, A Treatise on Roads. What had led a Member of Parliament to devote his energies to this work, which is not mentioned in his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ? I soon found a clue on the title page, which states that the book includes ‘The plans, specifications, and contracts made use of by Thomas Telford, Esq. on the Holyhead road’ . Parnell published his book in 1833, a year before Telford died at the end of a long working life which had begun as a boy shepherd in the Scottish Borders. It is an awkward, almost impossible read, and nowhere in it does the author properly explain why he produced it. The answer, I discovered, is that in the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, Parnell, more of a progressive activist than is commonly known, had led the building of a new express road through North Wales to the
Menai Suspension Bridge, opened 1826, by Thomas Telford. Image © Alamy Stock Photo.
Irish ferry at Holyhead, and picked Telford as the engineer to do it. The book is an unexpected piece of writing from a politician: although the introduction makes sweeping remarks about the importance of roads in helping nations escape ‘poverty and barbarism’ , the bulk of it is made up of long, dry chapters on the practice of making roads themselves. There are sections on ‘friction’ and ‘erroneous rules’ , ‘retaining walls’ and ‘Shropshire Pebbles’ – more a technical guide for trainees than national argument. And there’s a clue in that mention of Shropshire – the county where Telford’s career as an engineer took off. The book is unquestioning in its respect for the old engineer, whose achievements in North Wales were indeed astonishing. With parliamentary and financial support from a board of commissioners, Parnell among them, Telford built a brand new road through Snowdonia, engineered so that stage-coaches could gallop unchecked. Among its many great feats the greatest was and still is the suspension bridge at Menai, linking Anglesey to the mainland, a structure which revolutionised civil engineering. As an Irish MP for much of his career, Parnell had a good reason for wanting a new fast road here. The journey from Dublin to London, which had always
been difficult, became intolerable for politicians after 1800, when the Irish House of Commons was abolished and members had to make frequent journeys to Westminster. After several false starts, it was Parnell who gave Telford the backing he needed to complete the project when the Menai crossing opened in 1826. As his book shows, theirs was more than a distant relationship. Parnell seems to have become an admirer and advocate of Telford. The opinions he voices in the book are not really his but those of his engineer friend, all the way down to his dismissal of railways as an ‘immense waste of money’ . ‘What seems to have been the great error on the part of those who have introduced the modern railway system was making excessive speed the main object of it, ’ he argues. The truth was that by the time Parnell’s work was published, roads were in retreat and railways – faster, cheaper and much more capacious than horse-drawn carriages – were the future. Telford must have known it but was too old to adapt. Parnell lived to see traffic on his Holyhead road lost to rail, a shift confirmed when the Britannia Bridge opened in 1850. Was the decline of his great project, which had seemed such a triumph not long before, one cause of the melancholy which in the end cost him his life? THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 13
HIDDEN CORNERS
Collection of the Imperial Russian Historical Society Virginia Rounding delves into the fascinating collection of original documents and correspondence recording key episodes of Russian history Taking up several shelves in ‘Societies’ , in the basement of The London Library, are the 148 volumes of the Sbornik Imperatorskago russkago istoricheskago obshchestva, or Collection of the Imperial Russian Historical Society. This invaluable and extensive compilation of documents for scholars of Russian history was published between 1867 and 1916, and is more usually known by its acronym of SIRIO. Most of the archival documents and correspondence amassed by the society and published here concern the diplomatic history of the period from Peter the Great to the Napoleonic Wars. There are dispatches from multiple, mainly European ambassadors to the court of St Petersburg, along with the correspondence of monarchs, statesmen, army officers and court officials,
14 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
reports of committees, such as that which met to discuss reforming the state apparatus in the wake of the Decembrists’ revolt, and accounts of events – or non-events, in the case of the abortive attempt to marry the Grand Duchess Alexandra Pavlovna to the young Swedish King Gustavus IV Adolphus in 1796. It was Simon Sebag Montefiore who said to me in about 2004, when we were discussing my commission to write a biography of Catherine the Great (published in 2006): ‘The first thing you should do is look through SIRIO, to see if there’s anything anyone has missed. ’ It was great advice, not least because it gave me the excuse to sit in what felt like a hidden corner of the Library, leafing through volume after volume. The serendipitous nature of the collection, the sense it gives of archival documents randomly assembled (even though to the original compilers there was nothing at all random about it), also makes it entirely possible that each reader will indeed discover something, or maybe just realise the significance of a few sentences in a document that no one else has previously noticed. The Russian Historical Society was founded in St Petersburg in March 1866, and was permitted to add the word ‘Imperial’ to its name just over eight years later. Its stated aim was to promote the development of Russian national historical education. The founder members included Prince Pyotr Andreyevich Vyazemsky, an ageing poet and member of the State Duma who in his youth had been a close friend of
Alexander Pushkin, along with a variety of industrialists, professors, diplomats and state officials, all with a professional or amateur involvement in historical research. The society operated as a closed club, with only those invited by several existing members or by one of the founders able to join; it seems also to have been exclusively male. But the activities of the society were public, those activities consisting of collecting, editing and disseminating rare or previously unknown documents and materials on history and putting them into circulation for teaching, with representative materials being published in SIRIO. The finding of such materials was made possible partly through the personal connections of Prince Vyazemsky and, later, by those of Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, the society’s third president at the time of the 1917 Revolution, when its premises in Petrograd were seized and its office plundered. Considered by fellow members of the Romanov family an ‘oddball’ , Grand Duke Nikolai had made many valuable contributions to the study of Russian history, specialising in the reign of Alexander I. Presiding at various times over the Imperial Geographical Society and the Society of Pomology as well as over the Historical Society, he had also written a nine-volume study of Asiatic butterflies and was credited with helping to introduce the tangerine to Russia. In 1919, following the Revolution, he suffered the fate of most of the rest of his family, being shot in the St Peter and St Paul Fortress in Petrograd, along with his brother
George, cousin Dmitri and uncle Paul. Scores of foreign and Russian dignitaries had pleaded with the Bolshevik government for the men’s release. Lenin’s response to one such petition, submitted by Maxim Gorky on behalf of Grand Duke Nikolai, was: ‘The revolution does not need historians. ’ But historians do need documents, and the work of the Grand Duke and his colleagues in amassing the contents of SIRIO continues to be of immense value to them. A useful volume for me when I was researching the life of Catherine the Great was No.7, which contains the reminiscences of Catherine’s mother, Johanna, about their trip to Russia in 1744, where the future Empress was summoned at the age of 14 as the prospective bride of the heir to the imperial throne. Johanna’s record, in which she, rather than her daughter, is the heroine throughout, goes into exhaustive detail, listing such things as the order of the convoy of sleighs on the last leg of the journey from Riga to St Petersburg. From the description Johanna provided of their arrival at the Winter Palace, one could be forgiven for thinking that her daughter had fallen out of the sleigh somewhere en route: ‘The Prince [Repnin] gave me his hand; I was to stay in the Grand Duke’s apartments. As I got out of the sleigh, I was greeted by the firing of cannon from the Admiralty glacis. On arrival in my apartments, hundreds of people were presented to me. My tongue was dry with cold. Nevertheless I had to exchange an infinite number of compliments. I dined alone with the ladies and gentlemen provided for me by the Empress; I was served like a queen. ’ Volume 12 includes the dispatches of Robert Keith, British ambassador to St Petersburg at the time of the coup in 1762 that brought Catherine to power. He reported of the day itself: ‘Last Friday
‘
Lenin’s response to Gorky’s petition on behalf of Grand Duke Nikolai was: “The revolution does not need historians”
Opposite Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, the Imperial Russian Historical Society’s third president. Left Session of the society at Novo-Mikhailovsky Palace, St Petersburg, early twentieth century.
morning about nine o’clock (as I was preparing to go to Peterhoff to meet the Emperor) one of my servants came running into my room with a frightened countenance, and told me there was a great uproar at the other end of the town, that the guards, having mutinied, were assembled and talked of nothing less than dethroning the Emperor. ’ But from my perspective, the greatest treasure trove to be found within the pages of SIRIO is in Volume 23, comprising Catherine’s letters to her closest epistolary friend, Baron Friedrich Melchior von Grimm. Their friendship began at the time of her son Grand Duke Paul’s wedding to his first wife, Natalya Alexeyevna, in 1773, when Grimm was a member of the suite escorting the bride’s elder brother to the ceremony in St Petersburg. Grimm was a German courtier of noble birth and was six years older than Catherine; living in Paris in the service of the Prince of Saxe-Gotha and the Duc d’Orléans, he was a close friend of Denis Diderot and the other philosophes. Since 1753 he had been producing an exclusive fortnightly newsletter, Correspondance littéraire, which was intended to keep the crowned heads of Europe au fait with the latest thinking on books, poetry, theatre, painting and sculpture, the 15 or so subscribers receiving copies through their embassies in Paris. This was just the kind of publication to appeal to Catherine, and she had long been a subscriber. During Grimm’s stay in St Petersburg, Catherine would frequently summon him for a private conversation after the evening’s
card-playing. She would sit at her table with some embroidery or other handiwork, make him sit down opposite her, and keep him until half-past ten or eleven o’clock. These conversations became so important to her that she tried hard to persuade Grimm to move to Russia and become part of her court, but he held firm against this proposition and, despite (or maybe partly as a result of) this stubbornness, the two became firm friends and maintained that friendship through a continuous exchange of letters, written in French, over the course of many years. Grimm became Catherine’s confidant, to whom she could let off steam without fear of the consequences. He became the recipient – one could almost say the receptacle – of her complaints, whether about the shortcomings of other people, her own health (she was always disparaging of doctors, relating to Grimm her accusation that the court physician Dr Rogerson didn’t know ‘how to heal even an insect bite’) or matters of state. Grimm kept her letters (as she expected him to do), but he appears to have been utterly trustworthy in not revealing their contents to others. By turns amused, impatient, triumphant, despairing – Catherine came as close to revealing her real self to Grimm as she did to anyone. She was soon complaining to him, for instance, about her new daughter-in-law, the Grand Duchess Natalya, telling him that ‘Everything is done to excess with that lady. If she goes for a walk, it’s for 20 versts; if she dances, it’s 20 quadrilles and as many minuets, without counting the allemands; THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 15
HIDDEN CORNERS
From left Engraving of Johann-Baptist Lampi’s painting of Catherine the Great, 1793, © Alamy Stock Photo; John Swain’s engraving of Louis Carrogis Carmontelle’s painting of Baron Friedrich Melchior von Grimm, 1769.
in order to avoid the apartments being overheated, she has no fire lit in them at all; if other people rub ice over their faces, she turns her whole body into a face. ’ And it was to Grimm that Catherine subsequently described the gruesome details of Natalya’s labour and death in 1776 at the age of 20. It was also to Grimm that Catherine wrote of what made her happy – her acquisition of art, her dogs and, above all, her grandchildren, particularly her first grandson, born on 12 December 1777, son of Grand Duke Paul and his second wife, Maria Fyodorovna. ‘Do you know Monsieur Alexandre? … I bet you don’t know Monsieur Alexandre at all, at least not the one I’m going to tell you about. He is not Alexander the Great, but Alexander the very little who has just been born, on the 12th of this month at a quarter to eleven in the morning. In other words the Grand Duchess has just given birth to a son who, in honour of St Alexander Nevsky, has been given the pompous name of Alexander, and whom I call Monsieur Alexandre. ’ She also wrote of her young men, that series of favourites for which she became (in)famous, neither giving a hint of impropriety nor holding back in her admiration. She described one of her favourites, Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov, to Grimm in hyperbolic terms, contrasting his natural perfections with ephemeral works of art, and referring to him as ‘Pyrrhus, King of Epirus’: ‘He shines like the sun, he spreads brilliance 16 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
all around him; and yet there is nothing effeminate in him, he is all male and just as you would wish a man to be. ’ Catherine was also effusive in a letter to Grimm after her first meeting with Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II in 1780: ‘If I were to begin singing his praises, I would never finish; he has the soundest, most profound, most learned brain that I know: by God, anyone who wanted to get ahead of him would have to get up very early. ’ It was to Grimm that Catherine was able to express her profound grief on the sudden death of one of her most beloved favourites, Sasha Lanskoy, in 1784 (‘I can barely drag myself around like a shade’) and on that of her closest friend, former lover and ally Prince Grigory Potemkin, in October 1791: ‘Yesterday another terrible staggering blow hit me. Towards six o’clock in the afternoon a courier brought me the very sad news that my pupil, my friend and almost my idol, Prince Potemkin-Tavrichesky, has died after about a month’s illness in Moldavia! You can have no idea of how afflicted I am: he joined to an excellent heart a rare understanding and an extraordinary breadth of spirit; his views were always great and magnanimous; he was very humane, full of knowledge, singularly lovable, and always with new ideas … but his most rare quality was a courage of heart, mind and soul which distinguished him completely from the rest of humankind, and which meant that we understood one another perfectly and could
let those who understood less prattle away to their hearts’ content. ’ On 9 February 1794 Catherine noted that it was exactly 50 years since she had first arrived with her mother in Moscow, and she enumerated for Grimm the people who were left who could still remember that day: ‘First of all there is Betskoy, blind, decrepit and wandering, who asks young people if they knew Peter I. There is Countess Matushkina, who at 78 years old was dancing at the weddings celebrated yesterday. There is the chief cup-bearer Naryshkin, who was a gentleman of the bedchamber at court when I arrived, and his wife. There is his brother, the Master of the Horse: though he denies having been here as it makes him too old. There is Grand Chamberlain Shuvalov, who hardly leaves his house any more on account of his decrepitude. There is an old chambermaid of mine, who forgets herself. And that’s just about all my contemporaries. ’ On 20 October 1796, just over a fortnight before she suffered a fatal apoplectic attack, Catherine wrote to Grimm words which can be seen as her farewell both to him and to the world: ‘I preach and will go on preaching common cause with all the kings against all the destroyers of thrones and of society, despite all the adherents of the wretched opposing system, and we will see who comes out on top: reason, or the nonsense talked by the perfidious partisans of an execrable system, which in itself excludes and tramples underfoot all sentiments of religion, honour and glory. ’ Catherine would undoubtedly have seen the Revolution that brought an end to the Russian Empire and, with it, the Imperial Russian Historical Society, as ‘perfidious’ and ‘execrable’ , in opposition to everything she had stood for. The collapse of the Soviet system would have been seen by her as a vindication and, given her didactic nature – her love of educating both herself and others – she would have taken considerable satisfaction from the recent reprinting of all 148 volumes of SIRIO (St Petersburg, 2008), and from the fact that the collection is now even available online (networks.h-net. org/node/10000/pages/138851/sbornikimperatorskago-russkago-istoricheskagoobshchestva-sirio). And throughout all the upheavals of the intervening period, the collection of the original volumes in The London Library has offered unexpected delights to connoisseurs of Russian history.
.
THE LEEDS LIBRARY In the second of our ongoing series on historic independent libraries, Librarian Jane Riley takes us behind the scenes at the famous Leeds institution Tucked away between the Co-Operative Bank and Paperchase on Commercial Street lies the doorway of the Leeds Library, the city’s oldest cultural institution, which this year celebrates its 250th anniversary. Inside there is a mixture of old and new, with the latest crime fiction nestling on the shelves alongside extensive historical collections, including 7,000 fiction titles that date back to the early eighteenth century. An advertisement in the Leeds Intelligencer in August 1768 announced the idea of founding a proprietary library based on one in Liverpool. The committee held its first meeting in September 1768, choosing Joseph Priestley, the theologian and
scientist, as the Secretary and Joseph Ogle, a bookseller, as the librarian. Forty years later, lack of book space saw the library move into its present purpose-built premises. From the beginning, the institution has operated for the benefit of our members and, from the initial 104 members, we now have over 900. The library has managed to survive because, as well as members’ subscriptions, it receives rent from two shops beneath the library. Buying books based on members’ recommendations, as well as those chosen by the librarian, means we have a varied and eclectic collection. This includes our oldest book, Sir John Mandeville’s 1483 Itinerarius in partes Ierosolimitanas, or
Above New Room at the Leeds Library. Left Main Room. Note the two gasoliers in the ceiling, installed in 1853 when the library first extended its opening hours into the evening.
Travels to the Holy Land, as well as a first edition of Herman Melville’s The Whale – one of only 500 copies of the English edition before he changed the title to Moby Dick – and one of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), rather dog-eared because it was well borrowed when it was purchased in the year of its publication. Some libraries and librarians would be horrified at its condition, but we embrace it (gently of course) in its well-read state as a part of our legacy. We are a lending library, not a museum. Indeed, a more recent acquisition, a signed, limited edition of David Hockney’s A Bigger Book, has been on display since its purchase in 2016. Members are welcome to turn the pages of the 35-kg tome because it’s their book, and deserves to be seen. Today we welcome readers young and old by offering a range of memberships, including student and family. Members who came in as children with their parents now bring in their own grandchildren. Bibliophiles can borrow up to 30 items, and a lively events programme, which includes a 250th anniversary academic conference, celebratory dinner, anniversary book and exhibition, allows members to feel involved in the continued success of the Library. Many great librarians, including The London Library’s own Robert Harrison, began their careers here. Harrison worked at Leeds for just over three years before moving to The London Library in 1857, but his catalogue was described as ‘the best the Library had ever had’ . He also made his mark on The London Library, leaving it flourishing after spending the remaining 37 years of his working life there. As we move towards our anniversary on 1 November, it is easy to become complacent, but we acknowledge that our continuance is only as good as the service we provide, the history we prize and the collections we cherish. And in the year we remember women’s suffrage, it is a privilege for me to follow in the footsteps of the library’s early women librarians, Mary Ogle (1774–1813) and Mary Robinson (1813–25). THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 17
.
the Georgian architect most in vogue Michael Dunne examines the work of James Gibbs, the designer of many famous buildings whose name is surprisingly little known today My story begins with seeing a tourist bus in Piccadilly. On its side were three roundels of well-known buildings: one showed St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square; another, King’s College Chapel flanked by the Fellows’ Building in Cambridge; while the third image was of the Radcliffe Camera, today’s visual shorthand for the University of Oxford. As a Londoner I had known St Martin’s since boyhood; as an undergraduate I came to love the Camera; later still I became familiar with King’s Fellows’ Building. By now, those who know Cambridge will have guessed what links these three edifices. The clue lies in the other name for the Fellows’ Building: the Gibbs’ Building. For all three icons of London, Oxford and Cambridge were designed by James Gibbs between the 1720s and 1740s. Who was James Gibbs? The London Library’s catalogues provide various ways of researching the man and his work, directing the inquirer to different shelf-marks: Art & Architecture; Biography & Biographical Collections; and Topography, for the three cities mentioned. In my searches I came across a folio-size compendium by George Henry Birch, London Churches of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries (1896), illustrating some ‘Remarkable Ecclesiastical Buildings’ erected in London by a quartet of British architects. The four architects discussed were Inigo Jones, Christopher Wren, Nicholas Hawksmoor – and James Gibbs. The lives of these four men overlapped. Jones, born in 1573, died in 1652, 20 years after the birth of Wren in 1632. Hawksmoor (1662–1736), Wren’s star apprentice, was Gibbs’s senior by 20 years, Gibbs himself being born in 18 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
1682 and dying in 1754. Between them the four spanned almost two centuries, and if they were known only for churchbuilding in London, their reputations would be secure. There were other famous architectural contemporaries of Wren, among them Colen Campbell and Richard Boyle, the latter better known as the Lord Burlington memorialised in the eponymous House in Piccadilly. Yet even with the addition of these two other architects there is a fair chance that Gibbs will remain the least recognised. Archival material tells us little about Gibbs’s early life. Born and formally educated in Aberdeen, in his late teens
and early twenties he travelled extensively in Europe before entering the Pontifical Scots College in Rome to train as a missionary for the Catholic church, only to leave the Jesuit institution within a year to concentrate on architecture, studying under Carlo Fontana, the man of the Baroque moment and architect to Pope Clement XI. By 1709 Gibbs was back in Britain, working for wealthy patrons both in his native Scotland and in England. But the great professional breakthrough came when Gibbs was over 30. In 1713 he was appointed one of two surveyors to serve the Commissioners for Building Fifty New Churches in London. Gibbs’s first public
Opposite North elevation and semi-circular portico at the west end of St Mary-le-Strand, consecrated 1723, by James Gibbs. Photograph © Angelo Hornak.
Above Fellows’ Building, King’s College, Cambridge, started 1724, with the Chapel on the left. Image © Neil Grant/ Alamy Stock Photo.
contribution to this 1711 parliamentary blending of High Church Anglicanism and Tory politics was designing St Maryle-Strand. The resulting church was a structure spatially determined by the confines of its cramped and noisy setting opposite the earlier, mid-sixteenthcentury Somerset House, yet so openly Roman, even Romish, in its external and internal aspects that it prompted sectarian censure and led to Gibbs’s removal from his surveyorship in 1715. Gibbs deplored the ‘false and scandalous’ reports of himself as a ‘disaffected … Papest [sic]’ – slanders which translated into the anonymous denunciation in Colen Campbell’s Vitruvius Britannicus (3 vols., 1715–25) of the ‘affected and licentious forms’ characteristic of Italian Baroque in general and Fontana in particular – it being obvious to the knowledgeable that Campbell’s real target was Gibbs. St Mary-le-Strand was consecrated in 1723, a decade after its foundation. In the interval Gibbs had established
such a reputation that he was already being touted to build the proposed new library for the University of Oxford. In the later and barbed judgment of Horace Walpole, the Gothic fan of Strawberry Hill fame, Gibbs was then ‘the architect most in vogue’ . Though the major stylistic influences on Gibbs were absorbed during his youthful period in Italy, contemporary Italy found its way into his work through the decorative brilliance of the stuccatori (ornamental plasterers) Giuseppe Artari and Giovanni Bagutti. During the 1720s work was begun on the Fellows’ Building, part of an overall plan to reshape King’s Front Court with a complementary south range facing the Chapel, the building which Gibbs described as the ‘finest’ in the ‘Gothick Taste’ he had ever seen. Though this particular project in collegiate planning failed through lack of funds, Gibbs was commissioned to design a central building for the university. This is the magnificent Senate House (completed
1730), whose elevations of giant attached fluted Corinthian columns and complementary plain pilasters recall the work of both Jones and Wren, while the spacious interior shows the artistry of Artari and Bagutti, in Gibbs’s view ‘the best fretworkers that ever came to England’ . Their work in the Senate House is widely considered to be one of the finest examples of Rococo plastering in England. But what of the three buildings depicted on the side of the tourist bus? The Fellows’ Building was commissioned to provide substantial living and administrative space for King’s, but not at aesthetic cost to the Chapel. Gibbs’s solution was to create, at right angles to the Chapel’s south-west corner, a building four-fifths the length of the Chapel and of three full storeys, topped with a signature parapet. Architectural deference to the Chapel meant that this parapet intersects visually with the transom of the Chapel’s renowned West Window and the middle THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 19
Left Portico and section of south elevation, St Martin-in-the Fields, consecrated 1726. Photograph © Angelo Hornak.
horizontal of the south face, where the 12 buttressed bays of superlative stained glass remain in full view across Front Court. As to ‘style’ , or historical echoes, the rusticated entrance-level basement of the Gibbs’ Building and the twostorey-high and pedimented central gateway suggest the monumentality of Italian Renaissance palazzo architecture, while the fenestration and detail reflect the simplicity of Antonio Palladio, whose interpreted work emerged contemporaneously with Campbell and Burlington, the latter perhaps best known for Chiswick House, the Veneto transplanted to West London. St Martin-in-the-Fields and the Radcliffe Camera display more aspects of Gibbs’s eclectic yet compositional genius. The church’s Corinthiancolumned portico recalls Graeco-Roman temple-building, and the distinctive Wren-like tower-plus-steeple in six contrasting and diminishing stages forms the contemporary adaptation of the Gothic spire. The balustraded parapet surmounting the south and north flanks is typical of Gibbs, and it is Gibbs who is 20 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
recorded in the term for the alternating blocks to the fenestration along the side walls of St Martin’s, ‘the ‘Gibbs surround’ . The interior of St Martin’s reproduces the external Corinthian verticality. Inside, however, the eight slender columns framing the aisle are raised on shoulder-height rectangular pedestals and carry dosseret entablatures at the top of the columns (another Wren feature), from which spring both semi-circular arches laterally and to the external walls and an elliptical vault to the nave. The result gives full visual play to the panelled ceiling executed by Artari and Bagutti, plasterwork which has won correspondingly lavish praise from architectural scholars. The transition from the broad aisle to the narrow sanctuary is signified by gallery-level boxes for royal and prestigious worshippers to see and be seen – a success, to judge from contemporary accounts of this extremely fashionable religious venue. Closing the sanctuary and completing the optical and liturgical journey is a Serlian East Window, a Palladian motif which Gibbs referred to as a ‘Venetian’ window.
Above The nave looking towards the East Window, St Martin-in-the-Fields, showing the plasterwork ceiling by Artari and Bagutti. Photograph © Angelo Hornak.
Opposite Upper Reading Room, Radcliffe Camera, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, 1737–47. Photograph © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.
British visitors to St Martin’s may not be aware of the architectural influence of this landmark church overseas, particularly in what would become the United States, with fine examples in Savannah, Charleston, Philadelphia, New York, New Haven, Providence and Boston. According to the cataloguers of the Royal Institute of British Architects, St Martin’s has exerted the greatest structural influence of any English Protestant church, an assertion made without irony regarding the legacy of this practising, if very discreet, Scottish Roman Catholic. Whether built mainly in stone or in wood, numerous churches throughout North America reproduced the combination of temple portico, expansive nave and towerplus-steeple, modelling promoted by Gibbs himself, whose Book of Architecture with 150 plates first appeared in 1728 and served for over a century as a primer for both amateur builders and professional architects. Today’s St Martin’s was not Gibbs’s first design. That had been for a round, domed church with a portico entrance, an Italianate form ultimately derived from
the Georgian ‘architect most in vogue’
the Pantheon in Rome. But the scale and cost deterred the parish commissioners. Instead Oxford was given the Radcliffe Camera, the circular building designed by Gibbs, and the first so shaped to serve as a library in Britain. Named to honour the library’s ‘Munificent Founder’ (benefactor), Dr John Radcliffe, and built between 1737 and 1747, the Camera is set in Nicholas Hawksmoor’s ‘Great Piazza’ , with collegiate and university buildings by him and Wren close by. Indeed Gibbs drew upon an earlier scheme of Hawksmoor’s for a library, and fashioned four distinct storeys beginning at ground level with a ‘Rustick Basement’ (a ‘regular Polygon of sixteen Sides’) supporting the main rotunda, then a superimposed drum itself surmounted by a lead-covered dome topped by a domed lantern. The two upper stages of drum and prominently ribbed dome above the balustraded parapet are articulated with sweeping buttresses suggesting Venice rather than Rome, reminiscent of Baldassare Longhena’s Santa Maria della Salute (completed 1680s) at the eastern entrance to the Grand Canal. The eight ground-level large pedimented openings (glazed early in the 1860s) are interspersed with smaller round-headed niches, the latitudinal contrast paralleled on the second and taller level by comparable spaces between giant paired Corinthian columns framing alternating windows and blind surfaces in the main body of the building. At the base there
is an open undercroft, Gibbs’s ‘arched Stone-Porch’ , a ground-level feature in earlier rectangular libraries such as the one by Wren in Trinity College, Cambridge. This former open basement of the Camera has been transformed into an ancillary reading room, allowing an appreciation of its superb arcaded structure and restrained decoration, notably the coffered domed ceiling. Overall, the heavily rusticated groundlevel polygon anchors the paradoxical lightness above of the rising and steadily diminishing rotunda, drum, dome and lantern-cupola. The stone, quarried in nearby Headington and further away in the Cotswolds, reinforces the contrast between the monumental, rough-faced basement and the smooth dressed stone forming the ashlar superstructure of rotunda and drum. Inside the body of the Camera, Gibbs’s graceful oval ‘great Stair Case’ mounts by two main landings and two half-landings from the north entrance to the floor of the Reading Room formed by the rotunda. Here the drum is carried on a circular arcade of eight Ionic pilastered piers, from which a balustraded gallery extends sideways to the outer wall. Repeating the pattern of St Martin’s, larger pedimented windows illuminate the gallery level and, lower down, smaller rectangular windows serve the floor level; while in the drum, even larger segmental windows fill the vault with light. All three levels of fenestration
describe one perpendicular line upwards from the apex of each of the eight groundlevel pedimented openings. Above the drum rises the dome, its interior divided by converging mouldings into eight richly decorated panels tapering towards the central rose. As for the interior surfaces, once again Gibbs engaged Artari, to enhance what Geoffrey Tyack has called one of the supreme ‘classical interior[s]’ in England. In a pedimented niche above the entrance-door stands a statue of Radcliffe, the work of Gibbs’s favourite sculptor, the Flemish Michael Rysbrack, who worked with Gibbs on many funereal monuments. We may imagine that if indeed Oxford’s authorities had set out to demonstrate the cosmopolitan nature of the ideal university, then the Radcliffe Camera is a most suitable testimony, a harmony of Classical, Renaissance and post-Renaissance architecture. As scholars here and abroad have argued, no British contemporary of Gibbs was more attuned to Continental ideas, with the Camera as the supreme example. Can we categorise Gibbs in stylistic terms? His tower and steeple for St Martin’s register Ionic, Corinthian and Baroque motifs; the Radcliffe Camera has Mannerist and Baroque as well as neoclassical elements; Bank Hall, a private commission which now serves as Warrington Town Hall, was described by Gibbs himself as his Palladian masterpiece. But there was a nuance to Gibbs’s range of architectural reference: the Palladian movement was predominantly Whig and Protestant and so had little political or doctrinal attraction for Gibbs. John Summerson, in his account of Gibbs’s ‘individual contribution’ to British architecture, acknowledges the many sources of Gibbs’s variety, with Jones and Wren given full value. Yet Summerson emphasises the contrast between the ‘tameness’ of Gibbs’s domestic work and the élan of the public commissions, ecclesiastical and academic. For Summerson, as for David Watkin, the Radcliffe Camera is the acme of Gibbs’s work, yet their judgments differed from that of Sacheverell Sitwell, who – like Walpole before him – had found defects in the siting and styling of the Camera, while lauding St Mary’s, St Martin’s and the Cambridge Senate House – masterpieces, wrote Sitwell, by the ‘Rococo’ successor to Wren: James Gibbs. THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 21
.
‘They faced death without flinching’ Diane Atkinson recounts the story of the suffragettes’ fight for votes for women that is told through the banner designed by the Scottish artist Ann Macbeth Ann Macbeth’s banner, which was originally designed as a friendship quilt, hangs in the suffragette display at the Museum of London. It is one of the most important artefacts of the militant campaign for the vote. The banner records the names of 80 women who had served prison sentences for various offences between 1908 and 1910, including obstructing the police, protesting outside the House of Commons, heckling at political meetings and smashing windows. Almost all of these women had been on hunger strike and ‘faced death without flinching’ , as the suffragette newspaper Votes for Women declared. The quilt was donated to the Scottish Exhibition and Bazaar held by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) at St Andrew’s Hall, Glasgow, in April 1910, by Macbeth. She was head of the Needlework Department of the Glasgow School of Art and a member of the Glasgow School art movement, along with Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Despite being blind in one eye after contracting scarlet fever as a child, she designed and made intricate appliqué and embroidery, painted ceramics with a favourite motif of blowsy tea-roses, and also taught metalwork and bookbinding at the art school. ‘Annie’ Macbeth was born in Bolton in 1875; her father was a mechanical engineer and her grandfather was the portrait painter Norman Macbeth RA. Macbeth was herself a militant member of the WSPU and was sent to prison, where she went on hunger strike in 1912. She was a semi-invalid for several months after her release, writing to a colleague: ‘I am still very much less vigorous than I anticipated … after a fortnight’s solitary imprisonment with forcible feedings.’ 22 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
Above Ann Macbeth’s WSPU banner, 1910, Museum of London. Image © Museum of London. The banner is currently on display in the museum’s People’s City gallery.
Opposite, clockwise from top left Emmeline Pankhurst; Christabel Pankhurst; Annie Kenney; Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence. All private collection.
Macbeth’s lettering for the title and upper panel of the quilt is pure ‘Glasgow Style’ . She has elongated the letters vertically, the horizontal lines of the lettering cap and underline neighbouring characters, the V-shaped U recalls Roman typography, and the decorative motif of dots around the names are reminiscent of Mackintosh’s designs. Macbeth made the linen quilt in the colours of the WSPU: purple for dignity, white for purity, and green representing hope. The names of two of the founders of the militant movement, Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel, along with two of the leading lights of the movement, the treasurer Mrs Emmeline PethickLawrence, and the mill-girl Annie Kenney, flank the title of the ‘Women’s Social and Political Union’ which blazes across the top. The main section of the quilt consists of 80 rectangular pieces of linen which are sewn together and bordered by green and purple panels. The pieces are embroidered with the signatures of women who had been to prison and gone on hunger strike for ‘the Cause’ in their struggle for the status of political prisoners. Many had been force-fed if they refused to eat, which involved being tied to a chair and held down by wardresses, while liquid food was poured by the prison doctor into a funnel and rubber tube which had been inserted into the nose or down the throat. Pethick-Lawrence bought the quilt from the exhibition for ten pounds and had it made into a banner. It was first used in public on the Prison to Citizenship Procession, held in London in June 1910, and has been displayed on various significant occasions since then, including a Suffragette Fellowship tea party in Westminster in 1950, where Lady Astor was a guest of honour. Founded in Manchester in 1903 by the Pankhurst family and women from the Independent Labour Party, the WSPU joined the law-abiding, moderate women’s suffrage struggle that had started in the 1860s. Frustrated by the lack of progress made by Millicent Fawcett’s suffragists, the Pankhursts rejected their polite approach and campaigned using methods which earned them the nickname ‘suffragettes’ , a sneering term used by the Daily Mail in 1906 which they happily embraced. The WSPU’s direct style
of campaigning shook Edwardian society to its core. The insistence of the authorities that suffragettes were ‘common criminals’ and not political prisoners (which they clearly were), and the refusal to grant the privileges gained in the nineteenth century by male political campaigners who had been incarcerated, led to a life-and-death struggle between WSPU members and the prison governors. From 1909 there were hunger strikes, and forcefeeding was inflicted on the women in prisons throughout the UK. Marching across the banner in four columns are the names of some of the
leading figures and foot-soldiers of the militant campaign. Lady Constance Lytton, whose father, Earl Lytton, had been Viceroy of India, provided two signatures, her own and that of her alter ego, ‘Jane Warton’ . Warton was a working-class woman whose identity Lytton created to get herself arrested while protesting outside Walton Prison in 1910. She wished to experience the same treatment meted out to working-class suffragettes who went on hunger strike and were force-fed; she had earlier been spared this because of her title. Rosamund Massy had the support of her mother, Lady Knyvett, also an active THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 23
suffragette, and her own husband, who was a colonel in the Dragoon Guards. Many were well-educated women who engaged with the community in social work. Jane Brailsford, married to the well-known Liberal journalist Henry Brailsford, had studied Greek at the University of Glasgow. Ada C.G. Wright, who was photographed in 1910 by the Daily Mirror sprawled face down on the pavement after being attacked by a policeman, ran a club for workingclass girls in Soho. Dorothy Pethick, sister of Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, was the superintendent of a girls’ club. The movement’s fast-growing workingclass membership is also in evidence on the banner. Jennie Baines, aged 42, the wife of a shoemaker, had worked in a gun factory when she was 11 years old; ‘Beth’ Hesmondhalgh, 27, was a cotton winder married to a railway signalman; and Catherine Worthington, 32, was the wife of a brass moulder; all 3 were from Preston. Ellen Pitfield, 30, was a midwife from Dorset; Selina Martin, 27, was a servant in Lancaster; and Theresa Garnett, 25, was a pupil-teacher from Leeds. The embroidered signatures mostly represent women from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Two, however, are 24 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
‘
Mary Phillips declared: “I didn’t enjoy anything until militancy began; when I was just a suffragist it was boring.”
’
American, Alice Paul, 24, and Lucy Burns, 33, who were studying in London and met at Cannon Row police station after being arrested at a protest in Parliament Square in 1909. They had active suffragette careers before returning to the United States, taking WSPU tactics with them to invigorate the campaigns in America where women were still unenfranchised. Women from diverse backgrounds are here, too. Vera ‘Jack’ Holme, a male impersonator and the lover of the Hon. Evelina Haverfield, was for a time Mrs
Pankhurst’s chauffeur and the leading horsewoman at suffragette processions. Florence Spong, one of five suffragette sisters, was a weaver, artistic dressmaker, woodcarver and lacemaker. Alice Hawkins of Leicester was a shoemaker and mother of six children. There are women of all ages. Jessie Spinks, a Londoner, was 17 when she joined in 1907, changing her name to ‘Vera Wentworth’ to spare her shop-keeping father’s embarrassment. The oldest name on the banner is that of Ellen Pitman from Bristol, who was 52 years old in 1909. Nurse Pitman was by no means the oldest woman to support the militant cause. The distinguished feminist Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, born in 1833, was 77 years old when she walked alongside Mrs Pankhurst in a deputation to Parliament in 1910. Other notable figures include Marion Wallace Dunlop, the first suffragette to go on hunger strike. The actress Lelgarde Atheling signed, as did Kitty Marion, a music-hall performer, who was forcefed 232 times in 1913 alone. Helen and Catherine Tolson were suffragette sisters from Manchester. Mrs Pankhurst’s youngest daughter, Adela, whose wayward ways saw her dispatched to Australia in 1914, is there. Of the three nurses on the banner, Sarah Carwin, Ellen Pitman and Ellen Pitfield, the last’s copperplate autograph is the most poignant. A nurse and midwife, Pitfield died of cancer during the Votes for Women campaign. She was released from Holloway Prison hospital wing 45 days into her 6-month prison sentence, having been imprisoned for setting fire to a wastepaper basket and throwing a brick through the windows of a London post office in 1912. She died six months later. On the left flank of these marching columns, schoolteachers Mary Leigh, 23, and Edith New, 31, were the first suffragette window-smashers, and were released from Holloway Prison in August 1908. They were incensed by the ‘violence and indecency inflicted on their comrades’ who were being led by Mrs Pankhurst and her deputation. The group had been trying to enter the House of Commons on the evening of 29 June 1908 to speak to Prime Minister Herbert Asquith to demand he grant votes for women ‘without delay’ . Leigh and New
‘THey faced death without flinching’
slipped away from the mêlée in Parliament Square and broke windows at 10 Downing Street; they were sentenced to two months with hard labour for wilful damage. When arrested, New declared to the constable: ‘Freedom for the Women of England. We are martyrs’ , and in court both women said they would do the same again. Leigh added that the next time it would be a bomb. Her suffragette career included roof-top protests and an attempt to burn down the Theatre Royal in Dublin. In 1908 Leigh left her job, became a paid organiser, served several prison sentences and was one of the first women to be force-fed in 1909. She was a political activist for the rest of her life. Preston suffragette Edith Rigby joined the WSPU in 1904, and marches in the adjacent column beneath two of her working-class ‘sisters’ , Beth Hesmondhalgh and Catherine Worthington. These three women were arrested on 3 December 1909 while protesting outside the barricaded Preston Public Hall, where Winston Churchill, President of the Board of Trade, was due to speak for the People’s Budget. They were sentenced to a month in Preston prison where they went on hunger strike. Edith Rigby’s brother Arthur was incensed at her behaviour, and in court pointed at a suffragette who was wearing lipstick, and sporting a hat at a rakish angle: ‘It’s that painted Jezebel who has led my sister astray. ’ Edith was too strong a character to be ‘led astray’ . A doctor’s wife in her thirties, she was detested by her middleclass neighbours for leading the Preston suffragettes, and also for her refusal to behave the way expected of her class. She chose not to wear a corset, smoked in public and treated her servants as equals. In the central right column is Mary Phillips, who in 1907 was photographed selling copies of Votes for Women, while several men look on, surprised at her ‘unwomanly behaviour’ of being a visible and audible presence on the street. She stood in the gutter to avoid being arrested for obstruction. Glasgow-born Phillips, who was 27 and a new recruit to the WSPU having for the previous 3 years been a suffragist, declared: ‘I didn’t enjoy anything until militancy began; when I was just a suffragist it was boring.’ Phillips was one of the 12 members of Mrs Pankhurst’s deputation who had
Opposite Mary Phillips. Image © Museum of London. This page, from top Edith Rigby, © Lancashire Archives; Emily Wilding Davison, private collection.
marched to the House of Commons in 1908 to meet the Prime Minister. After he refused to see them, they walked to Caxton Hall. More suffragettes appeared in Parliament Square in hansom cabs, and on the top of horse-drawn omnibuses. Using megaphones, they urged the public to clear a path for the deputation’s second attempt to enter by the Strangers’ Entrance. The combination of a huge police presence, a growing crowd and many suffragettes trying to wriggle through the heavy police cordon led to
the ‘fiercest of scrimmages’ . Phillips, who was one of the 27 women to be arrested, was sentenced to 3 months in prison for obstruction. She wrote: ‘I thought prison was rather a joke … you were undressed, weighed and measured and then given these awful clothes. ’ In the far-right phalanx we see the autograph of Emily Wilding Davison. Born in 1871, she joined the WSPU in 1906 and 18 months later ‘came out’ as a suffragette, resigning her post as governess to the children of a Liberal MP and becoming a dedicated militant. By the time the quilt was made she had served four prison sentences, two in Holloway and two in Strangeways in Manchester. The first was for a month for trying to enter the House of Commons in March 1909; the second in July 1909 was for two months for protesting outside Lloyd George’s meeting in Limehouse; she was released after a five-day hunger strike. The third was served in Strangeways for obstruction outside a Liberal meeting in September 1909. Sentenced in October 1909 to a month’s hard labour at Strangeways, she went on hunger strike and was force-fed. Several more prison sentences later, on 4 June 1913 at the Derby, Emily tried to stop the King’s horse, Anmer, during the race. Her deathly dash was captured on film and made her the WSPU’s first martyr to the cause. In 1926 the ‘Suffragette Club’ , formed to preserve the story of the militants’ struggle and the role of the Pankhurst family, began to collect and archive the artefacts of their campaign. In 1947 there was a Suffragette Museum at 41 Cromwell Road. In 1950 the Suffragette Fellowship, as it became known, donated thousands of items to the London Museum in Kensington Palace. In 1975 the museum merged with the Guildhall Museum to form the Museum of London, and moved to its current premises in the City in 1976. The banner appears to have arrived at the London Museum during the 1960s, but its provenance is something of a mystery.
.
I would be delighted to hear from London Library members who have a connection with any of the names on this banner. I have been unable to find any information about Nora Dunlop and Edith Davies – can anyone help? If so please contact me (drdianeatkinson @aol.com). THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 25
MEMBERS’ News THE YEAR IN NUMBERS The Library’s Treasurer, Philip Broadley, discusses the results for the 2017–2018 financial year and explains the Library’s plans to address its operating deficit
The extract above is not part of the commentary from a recent set of London Library management accounts, but comes from a report for a Library sub-committee written on 29 October 1924. Though the report was written almost 100 years ago, reading the report today it is striking how many similarities there are between the Library’s financial situation then and now. The trustees have long sought to sustain the Library’s extraordinary facilities and collection by growing our income. The table on the right shows the results from 2017–2018, and reports that the Library made a small overall surplus of £147k, but that the operating result shows a significant deficit of £1,130k, largely offset by the Library’s net fundraising income of £1,058k. This has been the case for the two previous years. A significant proportion of the year’s fundraising income came 26 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
2018
2018
2017
2017
£000 £000 £000 £000 Operating result Membership and trading income 2,705 2,801 Less: related expenditure (3,835) (3,958) (1,130) (1,157) Fundraising activity Fundraising income 1,398 Less: related expenditure (340) Net investment income Gains/(losses) in the value of investments Reduction/(increase) in the estimated liability of the pensions deficit under accounting standards
£000
£000
(1,042)
1,330 (280) 1,081
1,050
332
317
Net movement in funds
(170)
659
(503)
149
116
(137)
147
from our Tom Stoppard Innovation Fund appeal which generated almost £1m in 2017–2018, bolstered by a number of significant individual donations.
2016
2,599 (3,641)
1,421 (340) 1,058 240
2016
At the end of the 2017–2018 financial year the Library’s overall reserves stood at £26.6m, the majority of which is tied up in the Library’s building
1,031
(315)
or relates to restricted or endowment funds that cannot be freely spent. The level of free reserves stood at £4.4m, broadly equivalent to the previous year and within
the range that trustees consider to be appropriate to hold given the Library’s current financial challenges. In many ways, therefore, the Library’s current financial position is the continuation of a familiar story, with the sizeable operating deficit being covered by large one-off individual donations. As I wrote last year, this situation is clearly not sustainable and much work has been taking place over the past year to put in place a strategic plan which will aim to ensure the long-term financial viability of the Library. The strategic plan will seek to significantly reduce the Library’s operating deficit by increasing the Library’s income while retaining strong cost control. For 2019 the trustees have proposed a fee increase of £10 to the ordinary annual membership bringing it up to £535, with those paying by annual direct debit having their fee held at £510 for the second year running. We recognise that for many people the cost of their Library membership is significant, and it remains the case that above-inflation membership fee increases are not seen as a way to reduce the operating deficit. Increasing the number of members continues to be a key priority for the Library, both through member recruitment and retention, but we recognise that membership fees alone are unlikely ever to be able to cover the Library’s operating costs, even with tight controls on expenditure. Establishing sustainable fundraising initiatives will therefore also play a key part in securing the Library’s financial future. Significant membership research has taken place over the past year and we thank those members who have kindly taken the time to assist with this. The results have provided much valuable insight into the various segments of both our current and potential membership, which will inform the future membership and marketing strategy that will be put in place to increase the Library’s membership. The strategic plan will also look at how to make best use of the Library’s wonderful but idiosyncratic building to support membership growth and commercial and fundraising initiatives, as well as growing the profile of the Library. Though the preparation of the detailed strategic plan is still in progress, things have not been standing still at the Library. As well as maintaining the daily running of the Library, a new events programme started in January 2018. This has been very well attended, by members and non-members alike, and with further events planned will contribute to further raising the profile of the Library. Additionally, a new members’ suite was opened on the 6th floor of the Library, offering more work spaces alongside space to use mobile phones and room for small-scale events. This has been well received by members. At the beginning of this article I noted the similarities between the Library’s financial situation now and in 1924. The work that has been done on the strategy to date is now being combined into a coherent plan for addressing the Library’s financial position. I hope that 100 years from now my successor as Library Treasurer will not feel the need to remark on the similarities to the Library’s 2017–2018 finances and that the Library will go from strength to strength over the next century.
ANNUAL REPORT The Library’s Annual Report and Accounts 2017–2018 is downloadable as a pdf from our website (londonlibrary.co.uk/ about-us/agm-annual-reports). In the interests of supporting the environment and keeping printing and mailing costs to a minimum, we now use a printon-demand system for those members wishing to receive a physical copy. If you would like a printed copy of the Annual Report to be posted to you, please request one by email (director@londonlibrary.co.uk) or telephone (020 7766 4712).
JOHN JULIUS NORWICH The London Library was saddened to learn of the death in June of the much-loved writer and broadcaster, John Julius Norwich. He was a prolific historian, with a writing career spanning over half a century, and his many books included major works on Venice, Byzantium and the history of the Papacy. His knowledge of literature Image © Alamy Stock Photo. was encyclopaedic and for 47 years he produced an annual and keenly anticipated commonplace anthology of literature, A Christmas Cracker. He remained active to the very end of his life, maintaining a busy schedule of lectures and public talks and producing three books in the last three years alone. As well as being a major public figure and writer, he was also a great friend and supporter of The London Library. He joined in 1960 and remained a member for the rest of his life. He met his second wife, Mollie Philipps, in the Library, and served for many years as a Library Vice-President, a position he held right up to the time of his death. In 1972 he appeared in a short film about the Library that was presented by John Wells and aired as part of the BBC’s arts programme Review. In it he said: ‘I’ve written every single word of every single one of my books in the Reading Room. Of course it’s not only people like me, writing books, who go there to work; it’s also students preparing for examinations. It’s people coming in to read magazines and periodicals – both ones of general interest and of learned societies, where there’s almost as complete a collection as can be found anywhere in England. It’s people who come in, possibly just after lunch for half an hour, to read the papers, look at a magazine, perhaps to doze off a bit in front of the fire. And why shouldn’t they? I think it’s for me just about the most agreeable room in the world.’ He will be sorely missed. THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 27
DONATIONS AND BEQUESTS The trustees are grateful to all our supporters – those names we are reporting here and those who have given anonymously – for their generous contributions to The London Library during the year ended 31 March 2018. Donations marked * were received via The International Friends of The London Library, a registered 501(c)(3) charitable corporation. FOUNDERS’ CIRCLE UK Dickens Howard Davies Adam and Victoria Freudenheim Basil Postan Mark Storey Philip Winston (with matching gift from Capital Group) Thackeray Philip Broadley Katherine Bucknell and Bob Maguire The Clore Duffield Foundation Bill Emmott David Lough Sir Tom Stoppard OM CBE Martineau Lionel Barber James Bartos Sheila Boardman Jenny Bourne Taylor Nicola Braban Sue Bradbury OBE Marcia Brocklebank Consuelo and Anthony Brooke Anthony Cardew Cullen Clark Michael Cohen Mr and Mrs Jerry del Missier P.C. Dettmann Isabelle Dupuy Sir John Gieve Andrew Hine Philip Hooker Dr Sarah Ingham Hugh Johnson OBE Margaret Jones Alan Keat Edward Lam Humphrey Lloyd Kamalakshi Mehta Barbara Minto Charles Morgan Simon Morris Lanre Oke Philip Percival Peter T.G. Phillips David Reade Peter Rosenthal Sir John Scarlett KCMG OBE and Lady Scarlett Peter Stewart Marjorie Stimmel Paul Swain Laurie Todd 28 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
J.C. Walton Clive Wright OBE Honorary Sir Timothy Rice Kimberly Samuel FOUNDERS’ CIRCLE US Dickens Wilson and Mary Braun* John and Kiendl Gordon* James L. Johnson* Professor William Van der Kloot* Thackeray Douglas Smith and Stephanie Ellis Smith* Gillian and Robert Steel* David and Molly Lowell Borthwick* Martineau Anne H. Bass* Montague and Mayme Hackett* Elizabeth Bennett Herridge* Professor Shepherd Krech III* Patricia and Tom Lovejoy* Patricia Holloway Boyd and Nicholas Cary Ruffin* Judith Goetz Sanger* TOM STOPPARD INNOVATION FUND Jeremy Adler Professor Michael Alpert Peter Anderson Nicholas Archer Anthony Astbury Audible UK Jacqueline Bordes Bailey Duncan Baird Ariane Bankes Eric Barendt Dr George Beckmann Heather Bell Stephen Benson Sam Berwick Darren Bird Richard Bird The Blavatnik Family Foundation The Rt Hon. The Lord Boateng Christopher Boddington The Viscountess Boyd Charitable Trust Sue Bradbury OBE Imogen Bright Marcia Brocklebank Barnabas Brunner
Sir Kenneth Carlisle Rupert Christiansen FRSL Dr John Cliffe Susan Cole Professor Tim Congdon CBE David Conville Nicholas Cooper D. Corcos Edward V. Cox III Richard Crewdson J.D.H. Cullingham David and Lizzie Darbyshire Peter J. David Barbara Davies Anthony Davis P.C. Dettmann Anthony Diamond Julian Duplain Charles Elliott Roger Ellis Sir Stuart Etherington Nicki Faircloth Susan Ferry Jim Fisher Charles Foster Professor Robert Fox Sylvia Freedman John Fulton Victoria Gibson Mrs Susan Goodsir Philippa Grant Irene Greatorex Edward Greenwood Antony Griffiths Robert Gwynne Dr Simon Harkin John D. Harkness John Harris The late Mrs Drue Heinz Hon. DBE Mark Hichens Rosemary Hill Andrew Hine Philip Hooker John Hoskin The Howberry Charitable Trust Professor Jeremy Jennings Robert Joyce Alan Keat Denis F. Keeling Herbert Kretzmer OBE Pedro Kujawski Elizabeth Lamb Richard, Virginia and Alex Langstaff Michael Leapman Phil Leask Becky Lehman R. Lesmoir-Gordon
Barbara Sinden Lewis Jean P. Liddiard C.K. Liddle Sir Michael Llewellyn-Smith Humphrey Lloyd David Lock Dr Frederick Lock David Lodge Anthony Loehnis The Logos Trust David Lough Hin-Cheung Lovell Richard M. Lowish David Lubin Julia C.G. MacKenzie Lady Manning Philip Mansel Stephen Marquardt Dr Penny McCarthy Dr Anthony McGrath Charles McInerny John Meek Gita Mehta David Metz David J. Miller John Mitchell Rosemary Monk Simon Morris W.R.F. Mount Clive Murphy Keith Niemeyer The late John Julius Norwich Chris O’Hare Edward J. O’Neill Brian Parsons T.D.K. Pearce Craigie Pearson John Perkins David Perman Peter T.G. Phillips Basil Postan Leslie Powell Sue Prideaux Isabel Raphael Peter Ratzer Brian Reed Michaela Reid Andrew Roberts I.W. Roberts Gareth Robertson Peter Rosenthal Sidney David Ross Joy Rowe Alan Russett Dr Richard Rycroft Kimberly Samuel The Sanderson Foundation
MEMBERS’ NEWS Anne Sebba Ruth Shepherd Sandra Shulman Ricky Shuttleworth Anne Siddell Edward & Lois Sieff Charitable Trust Prof. E.H. Sondheimer Thomas Soper Angela Spindler-Brown Peter Stewart His Honour Eric Stockdale The Eric Stonehouse Trust Karen Storey Allan Sutcliffe Neil C. Thomas R.E. Thompson Sir John Thomson A.Thorne N. Thornhill Gillian Tindall Patricia Trahar Monica Tross Julia Tugendhat United Agents Professor William Van der Kloot Lester Venter David Vermont Bob Verner-Jeffreys Charles Vyvyan Michael Wace Peter Watson Nigel Wenban-Smith Earl of Weymss and March Carol Day Buck Whitehead David Williams Haydn Williams Alyson Wilson Dr M.I. Wilson Winton Philanthropies Egerton Wood Christopher Woon David Worthington DEVELOPMENT APPEAL FUND Sebastian Brock Trevor Coldrey O.J. Colman Charitable Trust Richard Freeman Jane Goddard Professor Isobel Grundy Baroness Hilton of Eggardon QPM John Madell The late John Julius Norwich Janet Rennie Peter Rowland Lord Runciman Sir John Sainty Jeremy White Ann Williams ADOPT A BOOK Grainne Cook Daniel Danziger Ian Davenport Gary Haines in memory of Jean Elizabeth Haines Alwyn Jones Caroline Medawar in memory of His Honour Nicholas Medawar, QC
Sue Moss in fond memory of Lindsay Leonard Brook Dr Bernard Palmer Jonathan Ruppin Chloe Somers BOOKBINDING Michael Erben Ms Kirby and Ms Musgrave Gerard Francis Sproston BOOK FUND Henry Ballmann Mark Blackett-Ord Philip Bovey Sebastian Brock Barnabas Brunner Dr John Burman Jody Butterworth in memory of Ian Butterworth Dr Michael and Anna Brynberg Charitable Foundation Penelope Byrde L.E. Collis Charitable Trust Penny Hatfield Dr Catherine Horwood James Myddelton The late John Julius Norwich Professor Henry Roseveare James Stitt His Honour Eric Stockdale SUPPORTED MEMBERSHIP The A.H.J. Charitable Trust John Colvin Elizabeth Bennett Herridge The Walter Guinness Charitable Trust Inez T.P.A. Lynn G.T. Severin Ann Shukman Mr O.B.J. Simmons Parthenope Ward MBE EMERGING WRITERS PROGRAMME Sir Max Hastings GENERAL FUNDS Richard Carter Eric de Bellaigue Mary Donoghue Fay and Geoffrey Elliott Norman Franklin J. Paul Getty Jr General Charitable Trust Global Philanthropic Rosalind Hadden Linda Halisky J. Hobhouse John Hussey OBE Cornelius Lynch Inez T.P.A. Lynn Barbara Minto Dr Andrew Reekie Sir Timothy Rice Phil Rowlands The Sanderson Foundation Ann Saunders
Gillian Sharp in memory of Lindsay Brook David Sherlock T.W.M. Steele Charitable Trust His Honour Eric Stockdale Mark Storey Lady Strabolgi Patrick Streeter Jennifer Wallace LEGACIES Margaret Eleanor Belcher George Girling Grange Will Trust Derek Pappin William Geoffrey Plomer Alec Brian Schofield Denise Geraldine Silvester-Carr Constance Madeline Swallow ROYALTIES The literary estates of John Cornforth, Ronald McNair Scott, Ian Parsons and Reay Tannahill have provided income from royalties. DONATIONS OF BOOKS Thanks are also due to various government and official bodies, learned societies, institutions and firms, and other libraries and publishers who have given their publications, and to the many donors of books and other items, who are listed below: Adelphi Edizioni Jeremy Adler Sir Norman Adsetts OBE Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Göttingen Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz D.S. Allin American Museum in Britain The Anglo-Finnish Society The Antique Collectors’ Club Artangel William Arthurs Neal Ascherson Anthony Astbury Petr Aven Peter Ayrton Claudia Azzola Peter Bagwell Purefoy Helen Baker Dr Phil Baker Dr Emma Barker Nicolas Barker OBE Sir Antony Beevor Dora Bek Marjatta Bell The Betjeman Society Mary Bing Professor Jenny Bourne Taylor Philip Bovey Professor Michael Branch The Francis Brett Young Society British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia British Sociological Association
Sebastian Brock Stephen Brook The Rupert Brooke Society Alastair Brown The Browning Society Dr Barbara Bryant John Buchan Society Justine Budenz Professor Victor Bulmer-Thomas CMG OBE Roberto Calasso Cambridge University Library Alan Cameron Michael Carpenter The late Richard Carter Frances Casey in memory of Richard Graham Lesley Chamberlain Caroline Chapman Children’s Book History Society Chris Beetles Ltd Rupert Christiansen Roger Clark in memory of Robert Oresko Dr Martin Cohen The Wilkie Collins Society Colnaghi Foundation The Joseph Conrad Society (UK) Artemis Cooper Rolf Dahlø Anne Margaret Daniel Richard Dargan Dr Richard Davenport-Hines Design Museum Helsinki Gina Douglas Martyn Downer The late James Downing Elizabeth Drury Professor Christopher Duffy Maureen Duffy John Duncalfe Tessa Dunlop Sarah Dunsmure Françoise Durrance Hugh Easterling Steven Eggett Travis Elborough Dr Brent Elliott Bill Emmott Michael Erben Sabine Ernst Dr Lissa Evans The Fabian Society Michael Fardell Richard Fattorini Simon Fenwick The Finnish Literature Society Professor William Firebrace Professor Allen Fisher Judith Flanders Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation Bob Forrest Professor Robert Fox Ken Francis Laura Freeman Andy Friend Friends of the Dymock Poets Friends of the National Libraries Continued overleaf THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 29
Donations of Books continued
Alan Fyson German Historical Institute London Dr Emelyne Godfrey C.P. Gordon Clark Richard Graham The Reverend Canon Dr Donald Gray CBE Roger Greaves Sarah Grochala Robert Gwynne John Hall Penrose Halson The Reverend Dr Edward Hanson Sir David Hare Caroline Hart Chris Harte Nick Hartley John Havard M. Havard Professor Karen Hearn Elizabeth Herridge Hertfordshire Association for Local History Mark Hichens Highgate Society Dr Maurice Hindle Michael Hodges David Hodgkins Desmond Hogan Paul Holberton Publishing Matthew Holland Philip Hook Johns Hopkins University Press Professor Geoffrey Hosking OBE Christopher Howse Ana Hudson Huntington Library John Hussey OBE Inge Hyman in memory of Robin Hyman Ianthe Press The Institute for Government Institute of Modern Languages Research Jeff James Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture Jane Jelley Lindsay Johns Dr Jörn Günther Rare Books Linda Kelly The Kipling Society Professor Peter Kornicki Paul Laffan Dr Carolyn Lambert Dr Michael John Law Eric Lee John Lloyd The London Library Development Fund Andrew Lownie Alex Lowry Dr Peter Lucas Philip Mann Marimekko Adam Mars-Jones Andrew Martin 30 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
The Massachusetts Review The Matthiesen Gallery Anne McCosker Dr Anthony McGrath The Melbourne Conversazioni Mary Miers The late Christopher Mills Sylvia Mingay Françoise Mobbs Sara Moore Richard Morgan Simon Morris Alan Mumford Museo Vincenzo Vela Myriad Editions Dr Vayu Naidu-Banfield Charlotte Nassim The National Trust R.G. Naylor New Statesman Simon Nicholls Geraldine Norman North London Collegiate School Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset John O’Farrell Tatiana Okhotina Stephen Ongpin The Oscar Wilde Society Oxford Film and Television Alan Palmer Peter Parker Patrick Parrinder Parrot Press Dr Susan Paskins Paul Holberton Publishing Penguin Group UK Dr Michael Peppiatt John Perkins Dr Timothy Phillips Dr Peter Pickering Dr Andrew Plant
Polish Army Veterans Association of America, District 2 Mark Potter Homan Potterton The Anthony Powell Society Dr Cecilia Powell The Powys Society ProQuest Prospect Books Pushkin Press Sir John Ramsden Random House Amanda Raven Nicholas Redman Michael Richardson CB Dr Jocelyn Robson Susan Ronald Royal Academy of Arts The Royal Anthropological Institute The Royal Artillery Institution The Royal Fine Art Commission Trust The Royal Horticultural Society Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society Michael Rudman Karl Sabbagh Alice Salmon Dr Joseph Sassoon Clive Saville Nick Schlee Victoria Schofield Lord and Lady Scott Mary Scott Miranda Seymour Professor Marion Shaw Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship Paul Sieveking Gareth Simon Andrew Sinclair Peyton Skipwith The Society of Authors The Society for Psychical Research
The Society of Women Writers and Journalists Sothebys Philip Spedding Gerard Sproston Dr Neil Stacy Dr Zenon Stavrinides Louise Stein His Honour Eric Stockdale Strange Attractor Press Sydney Smith Association Susan Symons Susan Jaffe Tane Dr Nicholas Tate Theatres Trust The Angela Thirkell Society Joyrene Thomas Sir Richard Thompson Dr Ann Thwaite Sir Michael Tugendhat Dr Frances Twinn Professor William Vaughan Edgar Vincent Michael von Brentano Paul Christopher Walton Parthenope Ward MBE The Peter Warlock Society Ian Warrell Jeremy Warren Dr Peter Webster Ralph Wedgwood Dr Richard Wendorf Patrick West Whitford Fine Art The Charles Williams Society Des Wilson The P.G. Wodehouse Society Stephen Wood Ben Wright The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Dr Ann Wroe Yale University Press Dr Paul Zuckerman
CHRISTMAS CARD 2018 The London Library Christmas card, which helps raise vital funds for the Library, will be available to order online at shop.londonlibrary. co.uk or from reception, from October 2018. (A postal order form will be printed in the Winter issue of the Magazine). This year we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Library card designed for us by Sir Quentin Blake. This classic reprint will be available in packs of 8 cards & envelopes (£6.00 ex postage).
MEMBERS’ NEWS
FORTHCOMING LONDON LIBRARY EVENTS HENLEY LITERARY FESTIVAL We are proud to be participating at this year’s Henley Literary Festival with three special London Library events. To book tickets, visit henleyliteraryfestival.co.uk. Sara Wheeler WHAT MAKES A GREAT TRAVEL BOOK? Wednesday, 3 October 2018 4.30pm, tickets £7 Town Hall, Henley-on-Thames London Library Trustee and prize-winning writer Sara Wheeler offers a scintillating world tour round the best travel books. Sara’s books include the international bestseller Terra Incognita (1996), which tells the story of a seven-month journey in Antarctica. Her next book, Mud and Stars: Russia, its Golden Age Writers and Me, comes out in 2019. THE LONDON LIBRARY: A PLACE OF INSPIRATION Wednesday, 3 October 2018 6.30pm, tickets £9 Festival Hub, Henley-on-Thames The London Library is home to one million books and thousands of writers, readers, thinkers and creative people. Chaired by Sara Wheeler, a panel of well-known authors will discuss their writing lives at the Library, how they approach their work and what impact the Library has had on their work and life. More details including speakers will be announced online (henleyliteraryfestival.co.uk).
IN CONVERSATION WITH ANTONIA FRASER Saturday, 6 October 2018 11am, tickets £12.50 Kenton Theatre, Henley-onThames Recently made a Companion of Honour for Services to Literature and the author of many widely acclaimed and internationally bestselling historical works, London Library Vice-President Lady Antonia Fraser joins the Henley Literary Festival to discuss her literary life and new book, The King and the Catholics: The Fight for Rights 1829 (2018).
LONDON LIBRARY PUBLIC EVENTS These events are open to Library members and nonmembers, and will take place in the Reading Room at The London Library (doors open 6.30pm, talks begin 7pm). To find out more and to book tickets, visit: londonlibrary. co.uk/about-us/whats-on MICHAEL BILLINGTON THE END OF THEATRE CENSORSHIP? Thursday, 27 September 2018 6.30pm Tickets: members £10+vat; non-members £15+vat Celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Theatres Act 1968, theatre critic Michael Billington will chair a panel of experts looking at the history of theatre censorship dating back to the Licensing Act of 1737, and debating different types of censorship that exist in theatre today.
The audience at our recent public event with explorer and writer Benedict Allen.
MOHAMMED HANIF RED BIRDS* Thursday, 11 October 2018 6.30pm Tickets: members £10+vat; non-members £15+vat Dubbed ‘Pakistan’s brightest voice’, bestselling author Mohammed Hanif discusses Red Birds (2018), his powerful novel about war, family and love. AGNÈS POIRIER LEFT BANK: ART, PASSION AND THE REBIRTH OF PARIS, 1940–1950* Thursday 8 November 2018 6.30pm Tickets: members £10+vat; non-members £15+vat Agnès Poirier paints a captivating portrait of those who lived, loved, fought, played and flourished in Paris between 1940 and 1950, and whose intellectual and artistic output still influences us today. *In partnership with the Bloomsbury Institute
LONDON LIBRARY MEMBERONLY EVENTS This event is for Library members only, and takes place in the Members’ Room on the sixth floor. It is a free event but please visit londonlibrary. co.uk/whats-on to book a ticket. jean moorcroft wilson SIEGFRIED SASSOON AND CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY: TWO UNLIKELY REBELS Tuesday, 6 November 2018 6pm Jean Moorcroft Wilson, whose biography Robert Graves: From Great War Poet to Good-bye to All That (1895–1929) was published this August, looks at Siegfried Sassoon and Charles Hamilton Sorley, the two greatest rebels among the First World War soldier-poets, who protested strongly against the war while at the same time writing some of the most moving poetry to emerge from the conflict. THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 31
FINE BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS Wednesday 28 November 2018 Knightsbridge, London
ENQUIRIES +44 (0) 20 7393 3817 books@bonhams.com BIBLE, AUTHORISED VERSION The Holy Bible, contemporary black morocco gilt, preserved in the original soft leather case lined in red patterned silk, 24mo, 1653 Sold for £8,750
ENTRIES NOW INVITED
bonhams.com/books
Prices shown include buyer’s premium. Details can be found at bonhams.com
