ยฃ5.95
T H E
Bill Bryson Giles Milton The Time Machine March 2020
Nยบ 47
CO N T EN T S DISPATCHES
D. Welcome
3
D. News
4
The Favourites Championing Writers Art in the Library Podcast People A Sterling Job A Career in the Stacks Become a Library Trustee
26
FEATURES
D. From the Archive
16
D. Corner of the Library
18
F. Body Language
20
F. Time Travellers
26
F. Balancing the Books
32
Following his recent travels around our anatomy, Bill Bryson celebrates “the last good place in the universe” How and why HG Wells has returned to the Library this spring, from the team behind a surreal theatrical adventure Historian and Trustee Giles Milton on managing the Library’s collection to ensure its future
32
LAST WORDS
L. Events
38
L. Meet a Member
40
Photographer, playwright and petrolhead Lara Platman
3
FOR THE LONDON LIBRARY Julian Lloyd Head of Communications Felicity Nelson Membership Director The London Library 14 St James’s Square London SW1Y 4LG (020) 7766 4700 magazine@londonlibrary.co.uk
W EL CO M E Our refreshed magazine will continue to put members at its heart
EDITORIAL: CULTURESHOCK Contributors Ed Behrens, Rachel Potts, Alexander Morrison Photography David Levene / Guardian / eyevine (cover), Greg Morrison (p13, p15, p18 and p26), Sarah Weal (p32) Art Director Alfonso Iacurci Designer Luke Smith Production Editor Suzie McCracken Publisher Phil Allison Production Manager Nicola Vanstone Advertising Sales Cultureshock (020) 7735 9263 The London Library Magazine is published by Cultureshock on behalf of The London Library © 2020. All rights reserved. Charity No. 312175. Cultureshock 27b Tradescant Road London SW8 1XD (020) 7735 9263 cultureshockmedia.co.uk @cultureshockit
The views expressed in the pages of The London Library Magazine are not necessarily those of The London Library. The magazine does not accept responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or photographs. While every effort has been made to identify copyright holders, some omissions may occur. ISSN 2398-4201
Welcome to our new-look London Library Magazine. After 10 years in its previous format, we decided, with your help, that we should give it a makeover. We hope you like it. Although the design has changed, we will continue to focus our articles on our members and the fascinating and varied ways in which you use the Library. We will keep on introducing you to interesting corners of the Library and its history, and informing you about how we ensure it remains a place of inspiration and support for all. I hope you find plenty here to pique your interest. In this issue, we are delighted to speak with writers Bill Bryson and Giles Milton, and we also discuss the theatre production of The Time Machine with playwright Jonathan Holloway and director Natasha Rickman. The “Meet a Member” slot provides a chance to catch up with Library regulars, and this month we meet with writer, motoring enthusiast and photojournalist Lara Platman. You will also notice that the magazine has grown in size. This is because we are putting more feature articles and interviews into each issue and reducing its publication to three times a year. Our fortnightly e-newsletter will continue to keep you up-to-date with all the latest Library news and announcements. We are very grateful to all those members who contributed their feedback via our magazine survey and the subsequent focus groups last year. It was extremely helpful in guiding our new approach to the magazine. We would welcome any comments you have on the finished product at feedback@londonlibrary.co.uk. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
•
Philip Marshall, Director
THE LONDON LIBRARY
4
T H E FAVO U R I T E S London Library members are known for their voracious and wide-ranging reading appetites. Here are the most-borrowed titles from the Library during 2019.
Fiction 1 Normal People, Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, 2018) 2 Late in the Day, Tessa Hadley (Jonathan Cape, 2019) 3 Machines Like Me, Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape, 2019) 4 The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker (Hamish Hamilton, 2018) 5 Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, 2017) 1 2 3 4 5= 5=
Non-fiction The Quest for Queen Mary, James Pope-Hennessy (Zuleika, 2018) Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, Adam J Tooze (Allen Lane, 2018) Thomas Cromwell, Diarmaid MacCulloch (Allen Lane, 2018) Last Days in Old Europe, Richard Bassett (Allen Lane, 2019) The Spy and the Traitor, Ben Macintyre (Viking, 2018) Appeasing Hitler, Tim Bouverie (The Bodley Head, 2019)
•
5
NEWS
CHAMPIONING WRITERS The London Library rolls out its programmes supporting writers in 2020
The London Library is due to announce its 2020-21 Emerging Writers Programme participants this May. Funded entirely by donations, the programme provides writers who have not yet published a full-length work with free access to the Library’s unique collection alongside writing development masterclasses and networking opportunities. Abi Daré, who was among the first programme’s participants, is now receiving plaudits for her debut novel The Girl with the Louding Voice. She is one of The Observer’s 10 best debut novelists of 2020. Anna Kahn, another 201920 Emerging Writer, says the programme not only helped her find her agent but also to explore valuable research and writing techniques, while current participant Deborah Torr says: “The extra support of peer feedback and masterclasses has been great for making progress on my writing in a meaningful way, and there's no better place to do
it, in the London Library, surrounded by all these amazing resources.” Up to 40 participants for the 2020-21 programme will be selected by a panel of judges including London Library trustee and novelist Isabelle Dupuy, author and broadcaster Bidisha, writer and translator Daniel Hahn, poet Karen McCarthy Woolf and playwright Amy Rosenthal. This year also sees the Library’s continued partnership with Jacaranda Books for the publisher’s Twenty in 2020 initiative, which will see the release of 20 books by black British authors. The Library has given each author involved two years’ free access to its resources to help support their work. The London Library has always provided a home for great writing, and it is where hundreds of authors have made their names. Its efforts in 2020 continue this dedication to supporting writers today.
•
(Clockwise from top left) Bidisha, Isabelle Dupuy and Daniel Hahn and are among the 2020-21 Emerging Writers Programme judges
7
NEWS
ART IN THE LIBRARY The Library’s first Artists in Residence will shortly reveal the product of 12 months’ immersion in the collection. About to go on display around the building this year are newly created artworks by printmaking specialists Mark Harris and Bob Matthews, which show their interest in how the collection links to the history of the printed image. Large-scale artworks created for the Periodicals space reveal the extraordinary range of images contained within, and are revealed through the movement of the shelving mechanism, echoing the action of a printing press. Harris’s
series across the Central Stacks comments on the joint industrial journey that materials and images take as they are mined and captured. Further artworks will be situated across other selected parts of the Library. “It has been an enriching experience exploring the visual material held within the Library,” the artists say. “We hope that the work will suggest alternative ways to access the collection and that we have sewn a seed for many more potential future projects between The London Library and the visual arts.”
•
Mark Harris, Dead Room, 2019. Image: Mark Harris
9
NEWS
PODCAST PEOPLE
Leading cultural figures are set to appear on The London Library’s new podcast series this spring. Jacaranda Books founder and publisher Valerie Brandes and Dhaka Literary Festival director Ahsan Akbar are among the podcast guests who will offer an in-depth look at the role books play in their lives and careers. Launched in November 2019, each month the podcast features a celebrated member discussing the books that have shaped them. With the Library Director, Philip Marshall, they delve into the Library’s archive and collection to uncover treasured books and nuggets of historical detail about them. Recent guests have included the social historian Hallie Rubenhold, who discussed how it felt to be caught up in a
social media storm as Ripperologists attacked her groundbreaking work on The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper. Bestselling novelist Harriet Evans, author of The Garden of Lost and Found, explored the high and lows of the writing life; while actor, rare books expert and president of the Independent Libraries Association Neil Pearson revealed his deep passion for the written word. Episodes are released in the middle of each month and can be downloaded on most podcast platforms or listened to on the Library’s website.
•
londonlibrary.co.uk/podcast
Valerie Brandes. Image: Miguel Villar; Ahsan Akbar
11
NEWS
A STERLING JOB Support from members and donors remains vital to the Library’s finances It was, perhaps, best put by Prime Minister and Library President Arthur Balfour, when in 1908 he wrote: “I wish I were more in the way of coming across people who could help us. But it seems to me that those who have money are apt to have no literature, and those who have literature often have no money.” The history of the Library is one of fundraising, from those who brought Thomas Carlyle’s vision of a new lending Library to fruition in 1841, to the 369 people in 2019 who helped transform the St James’s Stacks with new windows and desks. Many have so far responded to an appeal to help restore historic lavatories on the red staircase, while a fundraising gala in November 2019, in support of the Library and its Emerging Writers Programme, raised over £60,000. At the gala, two adoptions of rare books in the Library’s collection were auctioned. Adopting new or favourite books provides valued funds and with around one million books on our open-access shelves, and a further 30,000 in our safes,
were they all to be adopted, the Library’s finances would certainly achieve long-term stability. This year a number of members have also generously left notable legacies in their wills. Whether directed towards the general funds, the endowment or other specific areas, legacies always proved a vitally important means of support. To plan the Library’s operation each year we rely on those generous individuals who make regular contributions and of these, members of the Founders’ Circle, the Library’s group of patrons, are the most important. The Library requires around £750,000 a year to help its operation break even, never an easy target to reach. That we even get close is a testament to the fact that while there is truth in Balfour’s comment, it isn’t the whole truth. The Library would like to thank all those who have generously donated funds this financial year.
•
londonlibrary.co.uk/support-us
The refurbished windows in the St James’s Stacks, generously funded by donations
13
NEWS
B E CO M E A LI B R A RY T R U S T EE
A C A R EER I N T H E S TAC K S In May, Peter Halsey in the Acquisitions team will retire from the Library after 46 years. Peter joined in 1974 as a Library Assistant, when Kenneth Clark was Library President, Stanley Gillam its Librarian, Tom Stoppard and AS Byatt had just begun their memberships and EM Forster had come to the natural end of his. Starting in Member Services and moving on to Binding (now Collection Care) Peter has masterminded book moves and been the Library’s Out of Print librarian since 1984, replacing Joan Bailey, who joined in 1939. He has amassed an extraordinary amount of information about the Library’s history, its members and the wealth of books on its shelves. Among his favourite memories is when a copy of Roy Farren’s 1948 biography Winged Dagger (H. European War II) was borrowed 33 times before anyone commented that the last chapter and epilogue were missing. A bibliophile through and through, Peter has devoted his career to books and is a passionate advocate for libraries. He’s been a part of this one for over a quarter of its 178-year history and the Library wishes him well in his retirement.
•
We are seeking up to five energetic, enthusiastic and committed people to join The London Library Board as trustees. Trusteeship involves helping with the Library’s overall governance, monitoring our strategic goals and supporting the Executive team. All trustees should be willing to engage in a constructive and collaborative manner with all the challenges affecting the Library and to act as its advocates in the wider world. Trustees must be members of the Library and, due to trustee retirements this year, we are particularly seeking candidates with skills and experience in finance, building projects, law and fundraising. However, we look forward to hearing how candidates from any background might feel they could use their own skills and experiences to benefit the Library and its governance. We are keen to achieve greater diversity among our Board of Trustees so we welcome applications regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation or age. While we are interested in some particular skills and experiences that are sometimes associated with professional qualifications, no specific educational or professional qualification is required in order to become a London Library trustee. We are also seeking two young members to become Trustee Placements on the Board as the current post-holders will retire their positions this year. The Trustee Placement scheme is open to members aged between 18 and 30 and is designed to encourage participation by younger members at Board level. Please note that young members are also welcome to apply for our other trustee positions if they choose. The closing date for applications is 26 April 2020. Find out more about these roles and how to apply at londonlibrary.co.uk/trustee-recruitment
•
16
F RO M T H E A RC H I V E
A letter of recommendation for an American author better known by his pen name, Mark Twain
17
T
he borrowing collection of around one million books is rightly celebrated as one of the great treasures of The London Library. But, behind the scenes, there is also a fascinating archive of material relating to the thousands of celebrated members who have been involved with the Library during its 178-year history. It is a treasure trove, and continuing explorations regularly bring up intriguing new finds, aided by the Library’s newly appointed project archivist Nathalie Belkin. In January, Nathalie made a particularly exciting discovery. During routine work collating piles of late-19th-century letters, she came across one from Andrew Chatto, owner of the publishing firm Chatto & Windus, dated 28 September 1896 and addressed to the Library Secretary. It reads: “Sir I have much pleasure in recommending Mr Samuel L. Clemens as a subscribing member of The London Library. I remain faithfully yours, Andrew Chatto” Samuel L Clemens was, of course, the real-life name of one of America’s greatest authors – Mark Twain. Cross-checking the archives of the membership records, Twain’s joining form was found, dated 30 September 1896 and signed by Clemens himself from his address in 23
“By the time he came to London, Twain was an international celebrity” Tedworth Square, Chelsea. He lived in the UK for various periods between 1896 and 1900, settling in Chelsea between 1896 and 1897. By the time he came to London, Twain was an established international celebrity (although following a string of business failures, far from a rich man) and had known Andrew Chatto for over two decades. Indeed, it was Chatto who played a key role in launching Twain’s international career in the 1870s. Chatto had acquired a small publishing business in 1873, the year he joined The London Library, and teamed up with the poet WE Windus to establish the firm under the new name of Chatto & Windus. A key breakthrough came in 1875 when Chatto signed up Mark Twain, whose reputation was
steadily growing in the States. The firm moved quickly to publish the world first edition of Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1876 and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1884 (US editions appearing in the following years respectively). From humble origins in the 1870s, Chatto & Windus went on to publish some of the world’s best-known authors, including Library members HG Wells and Aldous Huxley, and in 1946 took on the running of Hogarth Press, which had been developed by Library members Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. As Twain himself would say: “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
(From left) Andrew Chatto’s letter of recommendation; The author in 1907
•
CO R N ER O F T H E LI B R A RY
The “shocking” story of one of the Library’s most secluded spots
19
W
hile the iron grille floors of the Victorian Back Stacks, opened in 1898, form one of the most familiar and best-loved areas of the Library, the even larger Back Stacks extension, designed by the same architect, James Osborne Smith, can often be overlooked. But they’re well worth exploring, with seven floors containing much of the History and Science & Miscellaneous collection. When opened in November 1921, these stacks virtually doubled the Library’s capacity, adding space for 200,000 more books on top of the 300,000 housed in the Victorian building. Osborne Smith was commissioned to design the new stacks in 1914, but work was halted following the outbreak of the First World War. Returning to the project in 1919, he retained the idea of immense bookstacks serving as the support structures of the building, but envisaged very different materials in order to make the new structure
“The glass flooring was strength-tested by dropping steel shelves onto it” lighter and cheaper. These bookshelves would be made of steel, not wood, and the floors of opaque glass rather than cast-iron grilles. Unusually, at a time when every encouragement was being given to promote domestic industry, the Library turned to the USA for its materials. Steel shelves and glass floors were fabricated in the States and sent in kit form to be assembled on site. (Intriguingly, very similar stacks exist in a handful of libraries built at the same time in the USA and anyone who visits the Boston Athenæum or Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh could be forgiven for thinking they had wandered into a hidden corner of St James’s Square.) Costing £24,000 and erected in just over a year, Osborne Smith’s designs proved easy to build and, as the Daily Mail reported, the innovation of glass flooring was successfully strength-tested by dropping steel shelves onto it. But what the designers could not know was that the combination of steel frames, glass flooring, brass handrails and shuffling feet would create a timebomb that has haunted members ever since. The 1920s stacks are a paradise for static electricity and the severity of the electric shocks they administer has become notorious.
Equally shocking must have been the vertiginous exterior walkway installed to enable intrepid users to cross over from the seventh floor into the St James’s Stacks. As a halfhearted safety measure, London County Council insisted the walkway be covered with wire meshing, but the gangway could not have been for the fainthearted and this rather fearsome addition to Library life was removed in the 1950s. Today, the 1920s stacks house some of the most heavily used parts of the collection. They also accommodate some of the Library’s more idiosyncratic individual desks and for those with a sense of adventure, the single desk at the very top of the stacks is surely one of the most secluded corners to be found anywhere in St James’s Square.
The Back Stacks. Photos: Christopher Simon Sykes
•
§ 21
BODY LANGUAGE
Beloved author Bill Bryson’s new book – an expansive history of the human body and what we know about it – is his latest project written and researched in the “last good place in the universe”
THE LONDON LIBRARY
“
I’m in a tricky situation at the moment,” says Bill Bryson. “I’m actually experimenting with retirement.” This will come as sad news to the writer’s untold numbers of fans, who have enjoyed roughly 15 million copies of his books worldwide – including Notes from a Small Island and The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, respectively about his adopted UK and growing up in the US. But taking leave of active publishing would also have drawbacks for Bryson. “I told my wife I would,” he says, “but I have to have a reason to go to the Library.” A supporter of libraries – Durham University, where he was chancellor for six years, named theirs after him – Bryson has called The London Library “the coolest place I know on the planet”, and has been a member since 2011. It makes perfect sense that a person with his irrepressible curiosity would feel a strong connection with it. Although he is possibly still best known as a travel writer – his 1995 tour of the UK, Notes from a Small Island, has a special place in the hearts of the British, and he’s
22
as about the science”, and The London Library’s biography and history departments were as useful to him as its supplies of medical books. “I just ranged all over the place… all of the library research I did was done in this building.” “I love a big, broad topic,” Bryson says, somewhat unsurprisingly. “To be able to go off in lots of different directions – that, for me, is why this Library is so perfect. It’s got something of everything.” It also, he adds, “has stuff that you wouldn’t find anywhere else”. Researching One Summer, his account of a momentous few months for America in 1927, he was “particularly amazed” to find in the stacks a tell-all memoir from the same year about the 29th president of the United States, Warren G Harding. Written by Harding’s mistress Nan Britton, it was “such a scandalous book that most bookshops wouldn’t handle it and those that did tended to sell it under the counter in plain brown wrappers”. The President’s Daughter is now still not readily available even in the US. “But of course, which library still has a copy?”
“After a while, I realised there was no reason to think my kidneys are failing just because I happen to be reading about them” given fond and hilarious accounts of Australia and Europe – he’s also written on language, Shakespeare, history and science, always retaining his easy wit and eye for a killer anecdote. A Short History of Nearly Everything (“me trying to understand the universe and everything in science”, he says) was the bestselling non-fiction book of 2003 (and of its decade), and his newest, The Body: A Guide for Occupants, is another Sunday Times Bestseller. On a January day in the Library, Bryson has checked out a biography of Ernst Chain, who helped refine penicillin, to check a fact for The Body’s paperback edition. There are traces of white emulsion on his knuckles from doing up his house, and he is as good-natured in person as he is on the page, offering this magazine’s photographer, who attended Durham but never met Bryson, a mock ceremonial graduation blessing. Although his latest book takes on biology, it is, as Bryson says, “really as much about the sociology of the body
For a man who went in search of the quintessential 1950s small town in 1989’s The Lost Continent, and whose acerbic takedowns of the British multi-storey car park, cyclists and rude service staff are famous, it’s no surprise that, with its peace and politesse, he finds the Reading Room “the most congenial spot in the whole Library”. He’s slightly pained when asked to be photographed inside it (“this is like a church during services…”) but gamely poses for a few minutes. Bryson is also often to be found in the Periodicals section, perhaps not the Library’s most glamorous spot, because “it’s nice and quiet, it’s well-lit and it has a couple of little corners you can sit in”. He also likes “a secret desk way, way up in the annuals on the top floor… but it’s so quiet that I sometimes fall asleep, so if I’ve really got work to do, I tend not to”. “I've often said to my wife this is the last really good place in the universe because everybody behaves here,” Bryson adds. “The only time I’ve ever had conversations
23
BODY L ANGUAGE
24
“This Library is so perfect. It’s got something of everything”
25
with other members because we’ve both been troubled is at the photocopier.” Most importantly, he loves this institution’s particular capacity for digression, enabling those “magical moments” of discovery. “The number of times I’ve picked books off the shelves just because they caught my eye... And sometimes you end up wasting a whole afternoon. But that’s one of the glories of life.” He says the Library’s “eccentricity” is key to this. “I would be heartbroken if they tore it down and built some modern, sensible, systematic building. Even after all these years, I’ll go down a back staircase and be amazed to have just emerged in the art department.” He recently whiled away a halfday in a section on Grant Wood, a fellow Iowan and painter of the 1930s Realist school most famous for American Gothic. He can also indulge his love for walking, using London’s great parks as a route to and from the Library when he’s at his flat near South Kensington. Being able to use the Library as an office is “useful in a kind of life-enriching sense… it’s a little bit like going to the cinema – a movie is a lot better when you’re in a room with lots of other people. There’s something about being in a space with others that are broadly like-minded and engaged in the same activity that just makes it feel collegiate and worthwhile.” When Durham’s Bill Bryson Library was unveiled in 2012, its namesake’s speech began: “Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding…” Is coming here an escape? “You have to switch your phone off, you’re not getting emails,” says Bryson. “You don't even really know if it’s raining for the main part, especially if you’re down in the basement. So it’s isolated but in this glorious, rich abundance of stuff.” He says he hasn’t quite determined how he will resolve the retirement conundrum. “I might spend some
BODY L ANGUAGE
years researching a book that never gets written; I’d just sort of pretend that I'm working on it.” It does seem a shame that there may not be a follow-up to The Body, on whatever topic it might be. Factual writing as accessible as Bryson’s is a rarity. Although he’s covered science before – and won the prestigious Royal Society Science Books Prize and the EU’s Descartes Prize for doing so – Bryson says his last book was one of the “riskiest” things he’s ever done. Because its subject is so much more relatable than particle physics and more widely understood, by your average doctor for instance, “if I made a mistake about how your kidneys operate I’d hear from lots of people. And I have!” Whether this is true, the book is, as The New York Times says, “delightful”. In close to 400 pages, it zips around strange and surprising facts (puberty is linked to an appetite hormone; crying and hiccuping are total mysteries) and characters that pop up along the road to our present knowledge (such as Walter Jackson Freeman, who performed lobotomies with an icepick, and the early endocrinologist whose “enthusiastic but misguided endeavours” involved him injecting himself with ground pig testes). Bryson’s new-found knowledge at first inspired panic. “After a while, I got a perspective on it and realised that there’s no reason to think my kidneys are failing just because I happen to be reading about them.” The biggest challenge, he says, was keeping the brain from taking over the book, because “virtually everything that is interesting about you as an organism is from the neck up”. One hopes he will keep enjoying the cerebral exercise that The London Library can offer, and annoy his wife by publishing the results. The Body: A Guide for Occupants is published in paperback on 28 May by Transworld
Bryson sits at one of his favourite desks in the Periodicals section
•
§ 27
TIME TRAVELLERS
Marking 125 years since it was written, the Library is hosting a theatrical retelling of sci-fi classic The Time Machine. The new play’s writer, Jonathan Holloway, and director, Natasha Rickman, explore their update of the hugely influential book by longtime Library member HG Wells
THE LONDON LIBRARY
THE LONDON LIBRARY
How much does your production take from HG Wells’ original text? JONATHAN HOLLOWAY It’s a homage to Wells and to The Time Machine, but at the same time, it is its own thing. We imagine that time travel has been invented and that it’s almost instantly become an incredible nuisance and has had to be made illegal. Everybody’s trying to travel back in time to solve problems, to save people by taking drugs back with them, etc, and so the present-day becomes unstable; things are always changing. NATASHA RICKMAN And the novel is very much about storytelling. There are beautiful descriptive phrases, but how do you dramatise that; give someone that experience of being around a table with a storyteller who has gone back in time? The answer is to make people a part of the story. So our audiences are in groups of 20, each with their own time traveller, and although each group sees the same show in some ways, they have a completely different guide. We also use headphones and projections. It’s like theatre meets installation. Things don’t just happen and you look at them; it’s very much a visceral experience. LL How have you worked the Library into the production? JH It uses this building to explain itself in some ways. For instance, there’s a scene involving the Times Room, where all the copies of The Times are kept, and it becomes clear when you turn the pages that some news items are caused by somebody going back in time and making an intervention, changing something in the past. NR There are also key places such as the Back Stacks, which are so beautiful, and theatrically present us with possibilities like lighting the audience from underneath. The building has offered amazing storytelling opportunities. LL What specifically did the space of The London Library conjure up for you? JH Walking through and watching the book titles go past is extraordinary. It’s like counting the rings within a tree to work out when there were good or bad summers; in the Library you can tell when a subject gripped people, or you see only two books on a topic that now seems quite imperative. This space is like a safe.
28
LL
And of course, this is very different from last year’s Dracula, which your theatre company, Creation, also staged at the Library. Was that one of the exciting things about this production, to use the space in another way? NR Yes. A library is essentially a time machine; you can dip into snapshots of time by reading a book, and we wouldn’t be doing a play about time travel justice by it happening in one place, so we’ve used a lot of the building. And staggered start times mean people are having the same experience at different times. There’s something endlessly joyful about that. LL How do you plan a production in a building like this, and figure out the plot of the evening? NR We did a lot of site visits, going, “God, this is beautiful,” or, “We’re in the Science & Miscellaneous collection. Isn’t that interesting or relevant?” Just digging for treasure. And then we decided what rooms to go into, in what order, and with that as a shape, we got the actors together. It’s all very well me saying, “Take exactly three steps to the left and then say this,” but you have to be open to the possibility of them going, “What if I did this lying on my back?”, otherwise it’s very difficult to create art. It’s a total free-for-all, followed by militant planning and then a free-for-all again. We then got to tech and did more militant planning. So it oscillated. LL There’s another aspect to this Library, which is the past members who haunt the corridors. Do you tap into that literary history? NR There is something really special about buildings that have a history; it gives them a particular energy. We explore what you hear and what you don’t; so though you may not see those members, you hear from them. LL What do you want the audience to be thinking about when they leave? NR I recently read one of the published speeches of Greta Thunberg, called “Our House is on Fire”. It is amazing, but after reading it, did I go out and strike? No. And I would love to think that I’m somebody who is active about things that I learn. Through some of the things that Jonathan has been researching for this show, I have found out things that I didn’t know were happening or could
(Opposite, from top) HG Wells photographed by Frederick Hollyer in 1903. Image: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo; A Time Traveller in The Time Machine, produced by Creation Theatre. Image: Richard Budd, 2020
29
A LI F E I N T H E LI B R A RY HG Wells achieved worldwide fame with The Time Machine in 1895, and joined The London Library a year later. He was an active Life member and the Library records offer compelling glimpses into his career and connections 1894–95 Wells’ writing career takes off when the Pall Mall Budget, edited by Lewis Hind, publishes the science-fiction short story The Stolen Bacillus, among 35 others. Literary editor WE Henley also publishes various Wells time travel stories, including early versions of The Time Machine in The National Observer and The New Review.
1895 Wells cements his place on the literary scene with the publication of The Time Machine in book form, The Wonderful Visit and two short story collections.
1896 As his third novel is published – The Island of Dr Moreau – the 29-year old Wells joins the Library with The Times’s drama critic FJ Nisbet as his referee. On Nisbet’s death, Wells pays the school fees for his daughter, May (who inspires one of the characters in Wells’ 1902 novel The Sea Lady). WE Henley joins the Library six months after Wells. Wells dedicated The Time Machine to Henley, who becomes a regular at Wells’ social gatherings.
1897 Publishes The Invisible Man. Joseph Conrad joins the Library. Wells began correspondence with the emerging novelist the previous year and Conrad, Wells, and novelist Henry James become regular visitors to their respective Kentish seaside homes.
1898 Publishes The War of The Worlds.
THE LONDON LIBRARY
30
1926 Becomes a Life member of the Library.
1912
1902 Lewis Hind joins the Library. As editor of The Pall Mall Budget he had given Wells his first break in 1894. Wells nominates actor Sidney Bowkett – his great school friend from the age of eight – as a Library member. Bowkett features in Wells’ 1905 novel Kipps.
1907 Charles Hagberg Wright, the Librarian at The London Library, invites Wells to dinner with visiting Bolshevik writer Maxim Gorky and his wife. In 1920, Wells stayed with Gorky in Russia and had an affair with his interpreter Maria Budberg, which was resumed when they met again in 1929.
Wells meets the 20-year-old Rebecca West (née Cicily Fairfield), following her dismissive review of one of his articles. The following year they begin an 11-year relationship that includes the birth of a son, Anthony West, in August 1914.
1914 Rebecca West joins the Library in January, her application seconded by HG Wells. West would go on to be a highly celebrated writer and Library VicePresident, becoming a Dame for her work and remaining a member until her death in 1983.
1919 Wells publishes The Outline of History, illustrated by socialist writer Frank Horrabin, to great acclaim. Horrabin becomes a Library member, nominated by HG Wells.
1933 Donates funds for the Library’s Central Stacks, opened by Stanley Baldwin in 1934.
1935 Lajos Biro joins the Library, having written the script for Things to Come, a film project Wells is closely involved with that is based on his 1933 book The Shape of Things to Come. The film is released in 1936.
1945 The Librarian asks Wells for the whereabouts of film director Laurence Howard, whom Wells had introduced to the Library in 1942. He has become uncontactable, taking London Library books with him, but is eventually tracked down… Wells, a Library member for over half a century, dies the following year.
(From left) HG Wells in 1925. Image: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo; Covers of The Time Machine. Images: GeoPic / Alamy Stock Photo and Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo; A Time Traveller in Creation Theatre’s The Time Machine. Image: Richard Budd, 2020
31
happen, and if they do happen, then what do we do ethically? We are giving the audience this information. LL Can you talk about the research you did, Jonathan? JH When Lucy Askew at Creation asked me if I was interested in doing The Time Machine, of course I was going to answer yes if for no other reason than the title is so fantastically well known, but I was almost instantly paralysed by the task. The original novella doesn’t have any of the elements that you expect from a text that can be dramatised: much of a story arc, or a principal protagonist or antagonist. The stakes are peculiar; to actually know what’s in jeopardy is quite difficult. So I sort of stared at it. Lucy had struck up a relationship with the Wellcome Centre, where I met a number of scientists, ethicists and philosophers and talked to them about some very “live” issues. For instance, that the equatorial nations might become uninhabitable in the next 50 years. It was absolutely fascinating.
LL What stayed with you the most from these conversations? JH Something at the Wellcome called the Big Data Institute: they regard the collecting and collating of data as entirely positive, believing that it’s by examining data that we’ll solve problems such as how we can increase human longevity, wealth and standards of living. NR I think we make this show active for our audience; we’re giving them the experience that HG Wells’ readers would have had in terms of being able to go, “What if...?” Hopefully, it means that people leave questioning, rather than going, “Isn’t it good that we know what happened?”
•
The Time Machine is at The London Library until 5 April 2020, and transfers to Oxford in summer 2020. Visit creationtheatre.co.uk for more information
§ 33
BALANCING the
BOOKS
Historian and London Library trustee Giles Milton reveals how managing the Library’s collection is at the heart of ensuring its future
THE LONDON LIBRARY
34
G
iles Milton remembers clearly the moment, back in around 1995, when he first heard about a certain hidden gem tucked away in St James’s Square. “A friend of mine said, ‘If you’re going to write a book, you’ve got to join The London Library.’” Twenty-five years later, nearly every single one of his 15 books have been written – and partially researched – within the walls of the institution. In 2015, he cemented this longstanding bond by becoming a London Library trustee, a role that sees him working with more than two dozen others overseeing transformational work aimed at launching the Library into an exciting new decade. Milton is best known for narrative history books such as Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, about the “spice wars” between England and Holland in the 16th and 17th centuries, and Russian Roulette, on the remarkable discoveries of a group of British spies who infiltrated post-revolutionary Russia. What is it that has tied him to the Library for so long? Firstly, a valuable combination of convenience and surprise. Shelving by subject matter means “you will discover books you simply had no idea existed, and wouldn’t really find in any other way”, he says. Also important for a writer who places “the personal letters, the diaries and the first-hand accounts” at the heart of his work is the “huge collection of published diaries and letters”, alongside vital secondary material, which fills the Library in abundance. It is also the Library’s history as a workspace, for authors such as Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf and TS Eliot, and its present network (“Friends who will read your stuff before you send it off to your publisher, where else do you get that sort of contact with other writers?”) that has ensured Milton, like many others, has made it a home away from home. When he was approached by a fellow trustee about taking on his current role, he accepted it on the specific premise of “representing those who use the Library all the time”, and he has been enjoying getting to know the building in a new light ever since. “It’s been really fascinating to see the inner workings,” he says. “You realise there’s an enormous amount of effort and intelligence being put into this place.” Current efforts are concentrated on helping the Library survive despite “real financial constraints”, says Milton, and he is acutely aware of the need to heighten the Library’s visibility. “This is a unique collection that you won’t find anywhere else; there is a sense of literary history when you’re in the building that is pretty extraordinary, and yet it’s often described as the best-kept secret in London.” The Library has always had an important role as a place of inspiration and creativity where ideas can be developed and shared. The current strategy seeks to make this role more prominent by ensuring the Library is more widely known and more widely used. There have been significant successes in recent years, not least of which has been its active public events programme. These changes have already begun to be reflected in the Library’s programme, which in the past year has been expanded to feature events such as, most recently, The Time Machine, an innovative staging of HG Wells’ sci-fi novella (see page 26). But they also extend deeper into visitors’ experiences, and the need to move away from a time when, Milton says, “elderly gentlemen who had come back from their clubs after long lunches would all fall asleep in the armchairs”, and towards an influx of young, more diverse members keen on social interaction. “You come to a library, what can’t you do? You can’t talk,” he says. The 1890s stacks
35
RUNNING HEAD
THE LONDON LIBRARY
36
“The Library is first and foremost about its collection, and nothing is done without careful consideration”
37
BAL ANCING THE BOOKS
“So the idea is to try and open up some more areas where people are able to exchange ideas and views.” There is, however, at this point in the Library’s history, an entirely different yet equally fundamental matter to consider: how to accommodate its burgeoning collection. Housing some around one million books, the building’s 19 miles of shelves have virtually run out of space, a problem compounded by the fact that the Library purchases around 6,000 books a year, “which quickly become the most-read items”, Milton says. This leaves The London Library, Milton says, with a “very stark choice”: either to stop purchasing these 6,000 books – something that their popularity and role in keeping the collection up to date rules out – or to put a plan in place to start placing books in off-site storage, or identifying some that could be removed from the collection altogether. There are some straightforward initial candidates for this, such as duplicate copies, journals that are also available online, or incomplete runs of lesser-known periodicals, especially if they are held in another institution in which they are a better fit. “We’re not a national collection,” Milton says, “and we’re not the natural place for some things.” The process of agreeing how best to manage the Library's collection is a meticulous one. “We’ve been holding open meetings where any member can come and offer their input,” Milton adds. “We’re really keen not to impose this policy, we want to involve people.” He also emphasises that the Library’s Collections Team, led by Matthew Brooke, Director of Collections and Library Services, takes “extreme care” in the work that goes into proposing how to take the Library’s space issue forward. “The Library is first and foremost about its collection, and nothing is done without careful consideration.” Milton is keen to stress that the project is far from unprecedented. The collection has always been “curated”, he says, by the librarians and staff who buy the books, as well as by members, who have a significant say in what is bought. Moving holdings off-site has already played a role in the Library’s activities. “We’re not destroying the collection in any sense; we’re doing what we can to manage and develop it, which has been done throughout its history.” It is this management work that allows The London Library to continue to do what it does so successfully: build a collection around subjects such as literature, history, art and geography “in their broadest terms”, while also embracing the possibilities that the 21st century offers. Online resources like JSTOR provide a reliable alternative that fits well with the Library’s push towards making the collection more accessible, while lesser-known publications that the Library is renowned for (such as the Hackluyt Society collection of travellers’ accounts from 1400 onwards, that offers readers the chance to be “transported to another world”) can stay on the shelves. It is all part of a future that Milton, as he works on his latest work of history exploring a divided Berlin between 1945 and 1949, is excited to be a part of. “We’ve been going 178 years now; how are we going to go forward? We need the space – and a collection – that meets the needs of existing, loyal members, and continues to attract new ones.”
•
For more information on the collection management programme, visit londonlibrary.co.uk/making-space
38
EVENTS Exciting events from the spring programme 23 April
Polly Samson In conversation with Edward Docx, the author discusses Theatre for Dreamers, her spellbinding new novel about utopian dreams and innocence lost, set on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960 among the artistic community in which the young Leonard Cohen met his muse, Marianne.
2–3 May
London Library LitFest The Library celebrates its birthday with a special weekend festival featuring two full days of talks, interviews and performance. The full programme is announced in March, so keep an eye on londonlibrary.co.uk/litfest or sign up to the Library newsletter to get early information on events and how to book tickets.
39
20 May
Philippe Sands and Elif Shafak In conversation with Elif Shafak, the award-winning author of the best-seller East West Street will be discussing his remarkable new book on the life and mysterious death of Nazi fugitive Otto von Wächter. (Sold out.) 18 June
Kamila Shamsie, Nikita Lalwani and Abi Daré
Writer Kamila Shamsie speaks to Nikita Lalwani and Abi Daré about their new novels, which tell the stories we never hear about the people we never see: the asylum seekers, illegal immigrants, the enslaved and disenfranchised – those who silently and thanklessly underpin economies from London to Lagos and everywhere in between.
For more information on members’ events, go to londonlibrary.co.uk/whats-on or consult the fortnightly e-newsletter
(Clockwise from opposite) Polly Samson, Philippe Sands, Elif Shafak and Kamila Shamsie. Images: Harry Borden, Antonio Zazueta Olmos, Zeynel Abidin, Zain Mustafa
40
M EE T A M EM B ER Lara Platman turns Library research into high-octane storytelling
I am currently writing a radio play about a racing motorist and aviator of the 1920s and 30s, Mildred Bruce. She was the first woman to win the Monte Carlo Rally in 1927; she then drove 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, tested the Bentleys that won Le Mans in 1929, did some wing walking, and after 26 hours of flying lessons, flew solo around the world. When I started really researching women racing drivers about five years ago, initially for a book project, I thought, “I need a whip. I need to be in an environment where there are book smells.” So I joined The London Library, and it reminds me of a factory for writing. I started out as a photographer, so writing isn’t my first job, although when everything went digital in 2008 and we all lost out to agencies, I got myself a journalism diploma. For my forthcoming radio drama, I needed to figure out how everyone was speaking, and the Library is brilliant because it has scripts – I’ve been reading Julian Fellowes – and the archive for The Lady, with its bi-weekly “The lady in her car” column through the 1920s. The car section has got everything on tap, with all the mad motorists through history, and I’ve been looking at James Bond. I love Fleming’s language; it is just fluent and deceiving.
Motorsport and portrait photography is still my bread and butter; I’ve always had a camera. My dad had a costumehire business and did all his own marketing photography, so I was 14 when we had a darkroom set up in our larder. We’d have socks hanging on the line in the day, then pictures hanging at night. Professionally, I first went into dance and theatre photography, working for the Royal Opera House, and for places like The Telegraph and the Wall Street Journal. Motor racing came in from Country Life when they sent me to shoot the Goodwood Revival in about 1998 and I got the bug. There’s a lot of theatre at races: for historical race events everyone dresses up. The pit lane to me is a stage, though the actors only come on for three or four seconds. I utterly love it. A picture is successful when it makes you ask a question, and I think it’s the same with writing – it’s best when you come away going, “But why did they...?” With any performance – writing, theatre or photography – it’s about anticipation.
•
Lara Platman is an ambassador for Leica Camera AG and her work is in collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum among others. Read more at gearstickandclutchbag.com and photofeature.co.uk
Laura Platman. Image: Charlie Chan
