The London Library Magazine: Autumn 2020

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E R D E M M O R A L I O G LU Lissa Evans October 2020

Emerging Writers Programme Nยบ 49

CO N T EN T S

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DISPATCHES D. Welcome from the Director

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D. News

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New Arrivals Picture Project Library AGM New Fundraising Director Financials in Review Dickens and Friends Covering Up

FEATURES

D. Corner of the Library

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D. From the Archive

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D. Collection Story

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F. Sketch Books

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F. Fiction for Now

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F. Fresh Voices

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British designer Erdem Moralioglu speaks with Alexandra Shulman about the Library’s influence on his latest collection Lissa Evans’ novels focus on the everyday experiences of those living through challenging times Engaging, experimental and exciting writing from the Library’s 2019–20 Emerging Writers Programme

LAST WORDS

L. Events

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L. Progress, Despite the Pandemic 38 Treasurer Philip Broadley reviews the 2019–20 financial year

L. Meet a Member

Writer and critic Kassia St Clair

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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 EDITORIAL: CULTURESHOCK Contributors Edward Behrens, Rachel Potts, Alexander Morrison Photography Tom Mannion (cover), Greg Morrison 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.

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W EL CO M E Notes on an exceptional few months Welcome to the autumn edition of The London Library magazine. I’m grateful to all our featured contributors who have worked to produce a fascinating issue under exceptional circumstances. It reflects the tremendous effort being put in across the Library to keep providing nearly normal services in circumstances that are anything but.

We were delighted to be able to reopen to members in July, albeit with some important adaptations. It has been wonderful to welcome so many members back to St James’s and I am grateful to you all for your understanding regarding our new rules.

I hope that all those of you who have not yet made it back to the Library have been able to enjoy our resources from afar. Please do make the most of our current offer to fulfil postal loans free of charge and the extended loan limits, as well as our recently enhanced online collections.

The pandemic has, of course, presented the Library with some very significant challenges. Inevitably this has slowed the very positive progress (described by our Treasurer Philip Broadley in this magazine) that we achieved throughout 2019–20 in reducing our operating deficit, generating strong membership growth and raising the Library’s profile. However, the support that members have already shown by renewing memberships and making donations is playing a crucial part in helping us through this difficult period.

Our AGM on 16 November gives us a chance to take stock of the year and look ahead. Coronavirus restrictions mean it is not possible to hold the meeting physically in the Library and this year’s AGM will be conducted entirely online. Details of how to join the meeting can be found on our website at londonlibrary.co.uk/AGM. The AGM Notice enclosed with this magazine sets out the agenda, which includes the election of Trustees and pricing arrangements for next year. The online format may feel unfamiliar, but I look forward to welcoming as many of you as possible to this year’s meeting.

Philip Marshall, Director

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NEWS

N E W A R R I VA L S The Library’s Emerging Writers Programme will support 40 new faces this year

The Library has welcomed 40 writers onto its second Emerging Writers Programme, selected from a field of more than 800 applicants, including 12 who are under 28. Their work spans a wide range of genres, from poetry to playwriting, and each will benefit from a year’s free membership alongside a programme of writing development and networking opportunities, peer support and guidance in the use of the Library’s resources.

The London Library Emerging Writers Programme launched in 2019 to support writers at the start of their

careers and help develop their work. A number of those involved in the inaugural programme are already enjoying success with published works and in TV and theatre production. To mark its conclusion in July, the Library has compiled an anthology of short pieces contributed by many of the participants. Read extracts on page 26 and visit the Library website for the full anthology.

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Visit londonlibrary.co.uk/about-us/ll-emergingwriters for more on the 2020–21 programme

Images: Courtesy the writers

THE LONDON LIBRARY

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P I C T U R E P RO J E C T A project to refresh picture displays across the building, so that they provide a better insight into the Library’s unique story, is about to get underway.

The current picture selection focuses on the Library’s governance, with portraits of past Presidents, VicePresidents, Committee members and Librarians, usually without much information beyond their name and dates.

Some of the pictures, especially older photographs, are deteriorating. Above all, there is very little about the members who have made such a huge contribution to the country’s literary and artistic output over the past 180 years.

Over the coming months the project will look at changing or rehousing some of the existing pictures, introducing some new ones, generally improving visibility and interpretation and ensuring that new displays fit the ambience within the Library’s building. Once in place, the refreshed displays will provide a further way of exploring the Library and its past, offering a fascinating look into the stories and people that make it so special.

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LI B R A RY AG M No increase to membership fees for the year commencing 1 January 2021 and raising the maximum age for Young Persons’ membership from 27 to 29 are two proposals from the Trustees to feature on the agenda of the Library’s 2020 Annual General Meeting on 16 November.

In light of the coronavirus pandemic, the Library’s 179th AGM will be conducted online, enabling members to attend and vote via an online meeting platform. Log in details and the full agenda (also carried as an insert in this magazine) can be found on the Library website. The meeting will vote on the election of Trustees: Philip Broadley and Isabelle Dupuy are put forward for re-election to a second and final term, while Library members Yassmin Abdel-Magied, John Colenutt, Patrick Fleming, Stephanie Hall and Stephen Withnell are put forward for Trusteeship this year.

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londonlibrary.co.uk/AGM

Vice-Presidents EM Forster, Rudyard Kipling and Rebecca West. Image: Suzie McCracken

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NEWS

A NEW FUNDRAISING DIRECTOR The London Library has appointed Melanie Stoutzker as Fundraising Director. Melanie brings more than 25 years’ experience in fundraising and consultancy with organisations in the heritage, cultural, arts, research, health and charity sectors.

Her appointment comes at a pivotal time for the Library as it sets out an ambitious strategic plan to secure long-term financial sustainability, and enhance its position as one of the world’s great literary institutions.

Sir Howard Davies, Chairman, said: “The London Library is a uniquely important creative centre which receives no public funds, so increasing our philanthropic support will be critical to future success and Melanie’s considerable knowledge of capital and revenue fundraising will help us achieve our exciting plans.”

Philip Marshall, Director, commented: “Melanie’s wealth of fundraising experience will be invaluable as we embark on our 180th anniversary in 2021, and in our ambitious plans to develop facilities and expand our role as a uniquely accessible literary and cultural resource.”

Melanie said: “I’m tremendously excited about the Library’s mission and the potential to grow its philanthropic income. I look forward to working with colleagues and the board to raise funds and help achieve the Library’s ambitions, and to build on the wonderful support of its members, donors and ambassadors.”

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F I N A N C I A L S I N R EV I EW The Library’s 2019–20 annual report, now online, reveals a more than four-fold net increase in membership over the previous year and an income increase of 3.5%. Operating costs in turn dropped 2.6%. While investments were hit by the fall in the value of global stock markets in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the Library met its annual

target to reduce the operating deficit. The Library’s Treasurer, Philip Broadley, reviews the figures and explores the Library’s resilience on page 38.

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For the full annual report, go to londonlibrary. co.uk/about-us/AGM

Melanie Stoutzker. Image: Suzie McCracken

NEWS

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COV ER I N G U P Many new books added to the Library now sport their original covers, providing discernible notes of colour throughout the shelves. Matthew Brooke, Director of Collections and Library Services, explains the change to the traditional policy of discarding book covers on accession: “Book covers are an integral and important part of the publishing story, and the creativity that goes into them is an industry in its own right,” he says. “They are designed to be part of the book.

“Visually arresting and identifiable covers can also help bring a collection to life and make the browsing experience – one of the Library’s most appreciated aspects – richer and more informative,” he adds. For anyone browsing the shelves, unadorned spines and an unfamiliar shelfmark system can be daunting – covers can provide additional information about a book’s contents and, for non-fiction titles, an author’s line of argument or approach to research.

In a busy lending environment, individual covers will eventually wear out, but while they last the Library is happy to draw on the undoubted value that they add.

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D I C K EN S A N D F R I EN D S In the 150th year since the death of Charles Dickens, the Library has uncovered his many connections with the institution in its founding days. Dickens was one of the Library’s 528 Founder Members and so were a number of his closest associates: his lifelong friend, advisor, unofficial manager and later biographer, John Forster; the illustrator of The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge, George Cattermole; the painter and great friend Daniel Maclise, who made a famous portrait of Dickens in 1839; the Liberal MP Thomas Talfourd, to whom Dickens dedicated Pickwick Papers in 1837; the actor William Macready, a close friend to whom Nicholas Nickleby was dedicated in 1839; and his publishers of more than two decades, Edward Chapman and William Hall.

Dickens’ name appears on the Committee that ran the Library between 1846–47, and he remained a member for many years. A Tale of Two Cities was researched with the help of London Library books picked off the Library’s shelves by Thomas Carlyle, who sent them to Dickens’ house in a cart.

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(Left to right) Charles Dickens by Daniel Maclise, 1839; a range of recent additions to the collection, with their original cover artwork

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CO R N ER O F T H E LI B R A RY The small and miniature books collection is a bibliographic treat

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ontaining nearly 350 books under five-inches tall, printed between the 16th and 20th centuries, this collection is surprisingly broad – highlights include collections of James Joyce’s poetry and an original 1839 copy of Bradshaw's Guide, the world’s first railway timetable.

Mostly housed in a glass-fronted cabinet next to the Reading Room, and accessed under supervision, the

collection also includes enticing miniatures (defined as books under three-inches tall), printed mostly in the 19th century, the golden age of miniature printing. The “Fly’s Eye Dante” of 1878 is the smallest version of Dante’s Divina Commedia in the world, while the smallest Authorised Version of the Bible, printed by David Bryce of Glasgow in 1896, comes complete with its own magnifying glass.

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Part of the Library’s collection of miniature books. Image: Simon Brown

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F RO M T H E A RC H I V E

The Library has unexpected links with the world of espionage, in fact and in fiction

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n the 1979 classic Smiley’s People, John le Carré depicts George Smiley – about to be lured back into the secret service from retirement – engaged in innocent literary research, “toiling obliviously, with whatever conviction he could muster, at his habitual desk in The London Library in St James’s Square, with two spindly trees to look at through the sash-window of the reading room”.

Smiley is not the only famous spy with a Library connection. In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1963, James Bond packs his suitcase ready for his first meeting with Blofeld, who is masquerading as a French count.

Q has thoughtfully supplied the Library’s copy of Burke’s General Armory – a standard work on heraldry – to enable Bond to unveil Blofeld’s deception. Ian Fleming was a longstanding member of the Library; he joined in July 1952, four months after finishing his first Bond novel, Casino Royale.

One of Fleming’s most familiar characters is M, fictional head of MI6. M is loosely based on Sir Mansfield Cumming, who ran the Secret Intelligence Service (the precursor of MI6) from 1916 until his death in 1923.

Cumming was famed for signing secret correspondence with the initial C in green ink. He joined the Library in September 1918, and completed his membership application in the same colour.

Fiction aside, the Library also became a home for three of the Cambridge spies. Guy Burgess joined on Christmas Eve 1932, then still an undergraduate at Trinity College Cambridge where he had just been introduced to the Cambridge Apostles by fellow student Anthony Blunt.

Burgess’s recruitment by Soviet intelligence – engineered by émigré academic Arnold Deutsch – took place two years later. Deutsch had been put onto Burgess by Trinity undergraduate Kim Philby, who had been involved with

“Cumming was famed for signing secret correspondence with the initial C in green ink, and completed his membership application in the same colour” Soviet intelligence since meeting Deutsch in June 1934.

A committed anti-Nazi activist and communist, Philby worked quietly in London as a journalist on minor trade titles. He joined the Library in September 1936, and after two years chiefly covering the Spanish Civil War, as he later wrote, “emerged from the conflict as a fully-fledged officer of the Soviet service”.

Last of the spies to join the Library was Anthony Blunt, by then a University Professor, who joined in September 1937. He was nominated by his mother Hilda Blunt, who had herself been a member since 1930. Accounts differ as to Blunt’s early association with Russian intelligence.

He visited the Soviet Union in 1933 and some suggest he was recruited in 1934, possibly by Burgess. Biographer Miranda Carter argues that it wasn’t until 1937 (the year he joined the Library) that he became a spy. What is known is that in 1940 he joined MI5 and was routinely passing Enigma transcripts on German troop movements to the Soviets. Eleven years later he tipped off fellow spies Burgess and Donald Maclean that the net was closing in on them, occasioning their hasty escape to Moscow.

C would have turned in his grave.

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(From left) Sir Mansfield Cumming’s Library membership application; Guy Burgess in 1935, the year after he was recruited by Soviet intelligence. Images: Suzie McCracken; Keystone Press / Alamy Stock Photo

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CO LLE C T I O N S T O RY

From sound effects to citrus fruit, the Library’s Artists in Residence reveal what inspiration they found on the Library shelves for their recent installations

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or printmaking specialists Bob Matthews and Mark Harris, the inaugural London Library Artists in Residence programme provided a unique opportunity to explore the history of the printed image.

MARK HARRIS

I became interested in photographs of new recording studios found in BBC handbooks in the Periodicals section. The images of these silent interiors, built to record orchestras, plays or lone broadcasters and taken before they had been used, held a powerful presence. A 1931 BBC article about sound effects reminded me of Universal Studios’ Foley Stage, on which random objects were used to mimic noises for radio broadcast, and so my large-scale print Dead Room features a variety of objects whose usage is undefined.

The Library also has a fascinating bound collection of 18th- and 19th-century prints collected by Mrs Emma Baddeley. They depict everything from battles to cari-

“I was drawn to pages where images had been stolen many years ago – these blanks are full of narrative” catures, but I was drawn to pages where images had been stolen many years ago – these blanks are full of narrative.

My use of cyanotype printing was influenced by Anna Atkins’ Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, 1843, considered the first book illustrated exclusively with photographs. Invented in 1842, cyanotype involves placing an object or image on a light-sensitive coated surface before exposure, leaving a negative image on vivid blue.

After seeing the Baddeley collection’s torn and discoloured blank pages, I decided to retain my imperfections such as crop marks and tape; to reveal and celebrate them.

BOB MATTHEWS

A great deal of my research centred around environmental writing from the 1960s, particularly the poetic conservationist Rachel Carson and the startling “climate fiction” of JG Ballard. I read Carson’s seminal 1962 work Silent Spring and Ballard’s 1964 novel The Drought alternately, one page at a time, to conflate them into one text and

create an unusual way of conjuring imagery in my head.

Both writers often employ the voice or character of an “exploratory” scientist and this figure became a protagonist in my artworks, exploring the Library’s collection.

I went on to look at subjects including tidal flow maps, loggia architecture and ancient nautical diagrams. The 18th-century Journal of Italian Letters and its delicate and surreal etchings revealed a distant world and gave a great insight into early branches of science. Some more of my own “exploring” led me to books on citrus fruit, and the experimental process of using the phototoxicity of exotic lemons to generate images through bleaching, which itself became a technical process I used to make my artworks.

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(From left) Page from Journal of Italian Letters, which inspired resident artist Bob Matthews; and Mark Harris’s La Houle, 2019. Images: Bob Matthews; Mark Harris

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Inspiration from the Stacks lands on international catwalks in the collections of British designer Erdem Moralioglu. He talks to Library Vice President and former editor-in-chief of British Vogue, Alexandra Shulman, about clothes, books and desk envy

SKETCH BOOKS Erdem Moralioglu. Image: Tom Mannion

THE LONDON LIBRARY

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ull disclosure: Erdem Moralioglu is one of my favourite designers. His feminine and decorative aesthetic has won him a celebrity following that includes actors Keira Knightley and Claire Foy, and the Duchess of Cambridge. And when I edited British Vogue, until 2017, I often wore his beautiful, romantic outfits at the parties and dinners that I hosted, many of which he generously gave me.

Moralioglu is one of the cohort of British designers that propelled British fashion into a position of key player in the fashion world from the middle of the 2000s. He launched his own label, Erdem, in 2005 and, along with names such as Christopher Kane, Mary Katranzou and Roksanda Ilincic, brought a professional creativity to the general perception of British fashion – which was of wild imagination, hampered by unpredictability and chaos.

There’s little chaotic about Moralioglu. He is pinprick neat with tamed, short dark hair in a side parting, dark sloe eyes, usually behind thick-rimmed spectacles, and a trim

“Anyone I find at my desk I usually feel a deep sense of resentment toward” figure dressed in an almost preppy style, which adds to an appearance younger than his 42 years. He speaks in the indefinable Canadian accent, which – and I can say this as I am the daughter of a Canadian – often sounds as if he is swallowing a syllable or two, and he possesses a sharp, laconic sense of humour.

We are talking over Zoom – Moralioglu from his east London, Aldgate studio, and me from my home in the west of the city. Behind him there is a large painted portrait of a woman – a very Erdem woman with bobbed, styled hair, probably painted in the 1920s, her gaze direct,

her presence strong. It’s the kind of woman he has often used as an imaginative jumping-off point for the fashion collections he has produced for the past 15 years.

The reason we are talking is that, along with being one of the most talented designers of his generation, Moralioglu is also a devoted member of The London Library. It’s a place where he finds inspiration and information, and before lockdown would often be found at a desk in the stacks.

“I love books,” he says, trying to tilt his laptop to show me heavily laden bookcases in his studio. “And so Philip [Johnson, an architect and his husband of two years] got me

Beaton in Vogue (above) provided Moralioglu with inspiration for his autumn/winter 2020 collection (right)

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SKETCH BOOKS

THE LONDON LIBRARY

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SKETCH BOOKS

“I was studying Beaton before he was a big photographer at Vogue… some of his society portraits spoke to me”

a membership for my 40th birthday, which he renews and pays for every year.” He laughs. “If you’re married there’s no getting out of it.”

Moralioglu’s childhood was far from the quiet, polished environs of St James’s Square. He and his twin sister Sara are the children of a Turkish chemical engineer who met his Birmingham-born mother when they both worked in Geneva. They married and moved to Montreal, where Moralioglu had a classic, outdoorsy Canadian childhood, but early on was fascinated by the clothes and style of his mother and her friends. His mother, who sadly died as his career was really taking off, was a huge influence, reading him books about artists such as John Singer Sargent and encouraging his interest in clothes from a young age.

But he attributes much of his attitude to designing for women to the fact of having a twin of the opposite sex.

He once told me, in an interview for Vogue, “Going through every stage of your development with someone who is the opposite sex is something I can't escape in how I approach what I do. I'm not afraid of women, of bodies. I'm not trying to flatten things.” Not only is he not trying “to flatten things”, but he uses the women he perceives as powerful and strong to build his collections around; such as the Italian photographer and activist Tina Modotti, or aviator Amelia Earhart. On some occasions he designs around women of his imagination, whose life and style he visualises with as much

detail as a real person, using them as inspiration for designs and the beautiful shows he stages to show his clothes.

In the Library, Moralioglu is generally to be found working among one of the art collections. “I take a sketchbook, usually just my wire-bound ones, my mechanical pencils, my erasers, a water bottle, usually a phone charger, and I just plug my earphones in and go for it,” he says.

Like many a Library member, he is furiously attached to the particular place he likes to work. “It’s very specific.

I had a very specific desk that I used to work at at the Royal College of Art [where he both did a post-graduate degree and worked as a librarian]. Anyone I find at my desk I usually feel a deep sense of resentment towards.” An emotion I suspect many Library regulars will understand.

“Yes. The book will not be written. The collection will not be designed. The day will not go as planned...”

Fashion designers work in different ways. Not all of them sketch themselves. But despite now being able to employ a substantial team and having a flagship store on Mayfair’s North Audley Street, Moralioglu remains a designer who brings every detail to the finished product.

He understands the dramatic differences that the warp and weave of fabric brings, and describes materials with passionate enthusiasm. Many of his clothes are made in silks and satins and lace, richly ornate and often depicting flora and fauna in a dramatic mash-up of period style that

Moralioglu’s moodboard for Erdem’s autumn/winter 2020 womenswear collection

THE LONDON LIBRARY

creates something both modern and timeless. And much of the research comes from his work in the Library.

His current Erdem autumn/winter collection was inspired by photographer Cecil Beaton – who was once a Library member – and was shown back in February in a catwalk show at the National Portrait Gallery (with which Moralioglu has a close relationship). This was when the Beaton show, curated by photographic historian Robin Muir, was due to open for the whole summer. Who could have known then, as the parade of models with their Nancy Cunard-esque hair and darkly painted eyes walked the galleries, that the Beaton exhibition would have to close only days after opening and the Erdem collection would not be seen by buyers in the traditional showrooms.

That collection is an excellent example of how Moralioglu rarely copies in a literal manner, but infiltrates notions into his design. “I was studying Beaton really before he was a very big photographer at Vogue. It was earlier, more like the 1920s, when his father had given him his camera and he was photographing his sisters Baba and Nancy. But then, looking at the book Beaton in Vogue, some of his society portraits spoke to me.” A portrait of American socialite Barbara Hutton might trigger an idea for a neckline, “and then I kind of digest it and think about it in different forms. I just sketch and sketch, again and again and usually I have piles and piles of sketches often of almost the same thing”. What emerged was a collection of primarily monochrome and silver clothes, referencing the black and white photography of Beaton, along with the silver of the albumen prints and the shimmering metallic fabrics he liked to use to promote drama and fantasy in his photographs. You can spot the Pierrot costume that Beaton adored for his many theatrical portraits and the geometrical prints and shapes that became a defining part of the deco period.

A key collaborator on this show was The London Library’s Yvette Dickinson, one of the Member Services team “who is”, Moralioglu says, “extraordinary, and has a great way of digesting things. I was talking to her about masculinity and women dressed as men and the kind of gender fluidity explored at that time. And then suddenly, I get from her a wonderful reading list or an article on mannish suits from the 1930s. She can get into that kind of research that I sometimes find challenging – accessing articles and different periodicals. And she came to the show and could see it. I love that.”

Like many members, Moralioglu’s routine has radically changed during recent months, but in more normal

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times he likes to arrive at the Library in the morning, hunker down for the day and perhaps grab a lunch from the local Itsu. Or alternatively, arrive at the end of the day and collect his books before taking a taxi home to Dalston, although he and Philip are renovating a house in Bloomsbury.

Fashion has been heavily hit by the effects of the pandemic and it’s unclear how fashion businesses will re-emerge at the end. But Moralioglu has been able to keep designing and producing. “I think Covid has allowed moments of calm that one wouldn’t necessarily be afforded.

The good days are really good and you feel like you are getting somewhere – and the bad days are just really quite bad. I think sometimes when something’s taken away from you, like the ability to go to the Library and research, you have to really be quite focused and decide more clearly what you want and what you need. So maybe there’s something in that.” And maybe there is.

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Alexandra Shulman is an author and Vice President of The London Library

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(From left) Alexandra Shulman in 2016, wearing an Erdem dress; Member Services team member Yvette Dickinson. Images: Richard Young/​S hutterstock; Suzie McCracken

SKETCH BOOKS

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FICTION for

NOW Lissa Evans finds inspiration for her novels in the spirit of ordinary people who lived through hard times

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t might be assumed that working from home did not take on quite the radical new meaning for writers as it did for many others this year. Not so for author Lissa Evans, who arrived at the Library at 10am on the first day it reopened after lockdown on 6 July. Having the Library shut was “miserable”, she says. “I always work away from home.”

She puts this down to poor concentration. The mere awareness of her husband, two children and dog are enough “external stimuli” to necessitate an escape, and The London Library has been a regular place to do so for the past 17 years. In this time Evans has written four acclaimed works

of fiction and three children’s books. Her novels Their Finest Hour and a Half, about wartime movie-making (and itself made into a film), and Crooked Heart, about an evacuee experience, both brought to life the everyday antiheroics of wartime British life with huge charm and wit, and were long-listed for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her first novel, Spencer’s List, was written at home, she says.

“But I was single then.”

She was also still working as a director, producer and script editor in television and radio, chiefly in comedy, directing episodes of Have I Got News for You and winning a BAFTA for the anarchic joy that is the Father Ted

Lissa Evans, looking onto Mason’s yard from her favourite area of the Library to work in

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television series, and an Emmy for political drama Crossing the Floor. In 2015, fiction took over. “I think I grew out of TV,” she laughs. “You go to the office and everybody’s 25 and looking terrified... It is fantastically stressful and writing’s a lot less so. It was me just getting lucky really.”

She came to the Library through a friend from comedy, author and scriptwriter John O'Farrell, and was hooked. “It's so lovely to work inside; it’s eccentric and endlessly fascinating,” she says. “And the serendipity of just going along the shelves and pulling out something that happens to catch your eye is always marvellous, both as a distraction and a research tool.”

Her historical settings, from wartime Norfolk to 1920s Hampstead, are drawn with a level of realism that feels effortless but clearly is not – it says something about the types of source material she seeks out. “I discovered in the Library basement a couple of years ago a collection of books which basically listed historical diaries and where they were kept. That was invaluable,” Evans says. “Also because I rely a lot for language on contemporary writing, the absolute gold dust is a book that is about the Second

World War and was actually published during it, so the fact that the spines in the fiction section give publication dates has been fantastic.”

More idiosyncratic sources include the Library’s collection of the Women's Social and Political Union magazine Votes for Women, which helped with her novel about the suffrage movement and its aftermath, Old Baggage; and “a tiny booklet” from 1945 by the Air Raid Wardens of Bromley, with “lots of detail on day-to-day activity at the end of the war. There are loads of books about the Blitz, but very few about what people were doing in 1944 or 1945, and yet London was under siege and thousands died from rocket bombs.” This fed into her newest book, V for Victory, which concludes a trilogy with characters from Crooked Heart and Old Baggage.

Why does this period fascinate Evans? It started, she says, with a book given to her father when she was 13, called How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life During the (From left) 2020’s V for Victory; Evans in Mason’s Yard; and among the History shelves. Images: Suzie McCracken

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“The absolute gold dust is a book that is about the Second World War that was actually published during it”

Second World War by Norman Longmate. “He was the first to compile ordinary people’s memories,” she says. “And my dad didn't read it because, as he pointed out, he’d actually lived through the war so he didn’t need to be reminded!

But I found it completely fascinating. It was things like, ‘What did you eat? What sweets were there? What did you get in your Christmas stocking? What was it like at school?’” She read the book so many times, “it gave me a sort of baseline of knowledge really, almost as if I had war memories of my own”.

This particular past reality is always fascinating, she suggests, “because it was so hard, and so miserable, and so boring, and people worked incredibly hard and yet they were definably the same sort of people as we are. When you read their diaries and so forth, they moan just as much – they’re

FICTION FOR NOW

people like us, but reacting with incredible gumption in a wildly abnormal situation.” For this reason, comparisons are drawn between that period and our current one. Evans says the key link is that “we don't normally have many mass experiences now, in which everybody is experiencing the same thing on the same day”.

In a newly opened Library, commonality is key for her. “It’s a social thing for me. I know a lot of people here and we go and have lunch together. So it’s my office.” The “new normal” future is, she says, looking bright because “the Library’s wonderfully well ventilated”. “My favourite desk currently is in the art department, overlooking White Cube gallery. It’s very good. You’ve got control of a window there.”

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V for Victory is out now published by Doubleday

The Library’s 2019–20 Emerging Writers Programme cohort. Image: The London Library

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FRESH

Read brand-new writing taken from an anthology celebrating the Library’s inaugural programme for unpublished writers

VOICES

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Spanning writing for the stage and screen, fiction for children and adults, non-fiction and poetry, an anthology of work created on the Library’s inaugural 2019–20 Emerging Writers Programme is soon to be made available online. From a Ukrainian past to a Hong Kong arrival, a northern outlet of Greggs to the contemporary female experience, these four extracts offer a flavour of the works within.

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The Distance Between Then and Now

By Megan Buskey

As a child in the 1980s, I was dimly aware that I had family in the Soviet Union.

My mother was foreign, I knew – there was her name, Nazha; her accent, which warmed and rounded her speech; her prominent eyes, nose, and lips, which I saw echoed in the Slavic figure skaters I watched on TV. As we lounged around my grandmother’s living room in a Ukrainian neighborhood in Cleveland, waiting for her to finish frying pierogies, I sometimes studied her framed photos of this family, noting with puzzlement my relatives’ stern, unsmiling faces and the drapes that hung behind them, the colors too dark. From these relatives, we got only photos and the occasional letter, read by a censor; no one in Ukraine had phones, my mother said. She meant this as an explanation but it only befuddled me further, for what kind of place didn’t have phones?

As I grew older, I turned into a person who was drawn to mystery for its possibility of novelty, for its promise of a test. To the surprise of my family, as a college student, I made plans to enroll in a Ukrainian language course in Lviv, a city close to the village where my grandparents had met and married.

Ukraine in 2003 had a nightmarish quality. Lviv’s center was the epitome of genteel Eastern Europe, with its wrought-iron railings and cobblestone streets, but its outskirts were dominated by Soviet prefab apartment buildings. After the sun set, the roads were dark because there was no money to turn the street lamps on at night. Water was only available for three hours in the morning and three in the evening, and everyone kept gigantic tubs in reserve in their apartments in the likely event that the utilities failed to keep even that schedule. The roads were riddled with potholes, the drivers reckless and fond of speed. Over the course of the summer, I passed by the aftermath of three car crashes where motionless bodies lay unattended. When I went for a run in a park by the university, a young girl playing with her barking dog stared at me and then called out. “You can’t run around like that,” she said, her eyes hard. “You’re bothering the dog.”

After my language program ended, I spent a few weeks with my aunts and cousins. In their care, the harshness of the environment was brought to heel. My relatives catered to my every need, real or imagined. They spoke no English but squinted their eyes in concentration as I struggled to express myself in Ukrainian, my accent thick. Everywhere I went, I was greeted with an elaborate, mayonnaiseheavy spread someone had spent hours preparing, but I could only peck at it.

By the end of the summer, my legs had the scrawny, unsteady look of a fawn’s.

Even so, I was transfixed by Ukraine’s depths – the complexities of its history and troubled present, and the fierce claim my family felt on me, a feeling I knew was spurred not so much by me but my mother and grandmother,

FRESH VOICES

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30

the people my Ukrainian family had lost to the traumatic severing that was Soviet emigration.

Since that first trip more than 15 years ago, I have been back to Ukraine many times for work and research and to visit my family. I’ve lived in the country for as long as a year. I still feel like an outsider there, but an informed one, a person who can grasp, perhaps with more ease than a native, the distance between then and now.

Last spring I spent time in Lviv with my cousins Lida and Ira. They’re a few years younger than me, in the neighborhood of 30. When I had studied those family photos as a kid, their presence had stirred me most – for their eyes were, like mine, on the green-blue spectrum, their hair was the same shade of blonde. Their images gave me the sense that I could easily be living a very different kind of life, one that I could only guess at.

Now, that opaqueness is yet another thing that is only a memory. Lida is an HR specialist for an international company, has a nose ring, and speaks better English than I do Ukrainian. Ira works in tourism and does art on the side.

The weekend before I visited, they had taken advantage of a low-cost bus fare to go hiking in Slovakia. Lida taught me Ukrainian neologisms for American business terms – cancellyvaty meant to cancel, skipnuty meant to skip. When she struggled with the web version of her Microsoft Outlook mailbox, I took a look at it and pointed her to the tile to click. With that, her calendar unfurled before her, a familiar cascade of blue rectangles. They were marked with English terms that could have been drawn from my own office life: “performance evaluation,” “catch up,” “training session.”

Not everything has transferred so easily. Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe, and my cousins’ lives bear that weight. They share a one-bedroom in a charmless neighborhood of Soviet high-rises. Getting to work takes an hour on one of the city’s lurching, exhaust-spewing commuter vans. The night before I left, as we commiserated about the daily trial of trying to remember so many passwords, Lida thought to check her entry to the annual lottery for U.S. green cards. “Of course,” she said when the message popped up on the State Department website that she had not been selected. “I apply every year,” she said, shrugging. “It’s free.”

The next morning, Lida decided to skipnuty her first meeting so that she could see me off at the airport. Before we left the apartment, she crouched to the floor, a Ukrainian tradition before a big trip, and gestured for me to join her. I obediently sank down. In keeping with the tradition, we said nothing.

For a few seconds, we stared at our toes and yielded to the power of ritual, to the changing of time and place and circumstance, to inhabiting with intention the moment between the settled past and the unknown future. I wondered whether my mother and grandmother had observed the practice before they had left the Soviet Union more than 50 years earlier. For a fleeting moment, it seemed like they were with us, their hands pulling at their ankles, their chins resting on their folded knees.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Lida said, breaking the silence. We grabbed the handles of my bags and headed down the stairs. The Uber was waiting.

Megan Buskey is currently working on a manuscript about her family’s experience in Ukraine during and after World War Two

31

Mr Blythe Esq. Typing I

By Amber Medland

Today my boss handed me an envelope, then a stamp, and told me to lick it.

My online therapist, Susan, says that my inability to set appropriate boundaries indicates low self-confidence. I am convinced that Susan is a bot.

I reply: I do not have low self-esteem. What I have is impeccable manners.

Julie and I used to live together. She wants me to get a real therapist and think seriously about breaking up with Phil.

But you don’t need analysis, she persists, just a different voice in your head.

Julie’s never held onto a man for long, is what Phil says.

At his birthday party, Phil told Julie that my manners are a substitute for a personality. She looked so uncomfortable that I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing; Julie didn’t know I was in on the joke. Phil was repeating a selfdepreciating remark I made on our first date.

Julie brings the same pale guacamole to every party and has to take it home again because nobody touches it. I bring tortilla chips.

As bots go, Susan is pretty dislikeable. She points out that maintaining a 4.9 Uber rating doesn’t imply superiority and that saying I am taking myself out for a drink hints at needing an escort.

I am determined to unmask Susan as the algorithm she is.

I will be thirty in seven days I type as I leave the office What are you going to do about that.

Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, Lucinda calls after me, tongue flashing behind her teeth. Lucinda is Mr Blythe’s daughter. She wears skirts and cardigans with matching edges, and pearls as big as gobstoppers. She used to occupy my position. Now she keeps track of supplier invoices and specialises in forcing small businesses to remove their service charges. She talks in a widdle baby voice to men.

Julie has set me up on a blind date for practice. I’m not going I text.

I hold my breath between tube-stops. Phil is always out on Wednesday nights, so I’ll still get back before him.

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Moo! And what does a sheep go?

Baaaah.

And what does mummy go?

Nag nag nag nag nag.

Father and daughter fall about laughing. Across from them, a blank-faced woman sticks her hand into a bag of salt and vinegar crisps.

I arrive at The Mughal forty minutes early and order a small glass of wine.

I’m determined to prove Phil wrong, prove that I’m not made of glass, and can go out without him, without breaking.

He ranks my smile as my least attractive feature.

It’s not a criticism; you’re just so pretty when you cry.

I bare my teeth at the barman.

When I sit down, Susan has not had the courtesy to reply.

And I’m fat. I send. Well?

I attach several photos of myself over the years to illustrate my point. My more appealing attributes I do not share. One day, a stranger will notice these and fall to their knees with the shock of me. My teeth, coral-delicate, their asymmetry. How mineralled my tongue is.

Susan has roused herself. Why don’t you tell me about your day?

The stamp was gummy and dry. My mouth feels now like it does at the dentist, after they suck the saliva out.

I tap notes into my phone on the sea-weed salad I bought with petty cash at lunchtime.

Vivid green, slippery, sesame oil. Kelp, animal, chlorophyll.

I met Phil on a self-defence course. He was the instructor. His body could sell aftershave. He was bald but he wore it as if it were a choice he’d made, and his green eyes knew that I knew this. I was disappointed when he didn’t act out the attacks in a realistic manner.

We didn’t have much in common, so at first our intimacy was restricted to a call-and-response. It was easier with roles to play.

Attacked by a shark?

Punch on the nose.

Bomb on the tube?

Drop down. Stay low.

Attacked by a man?

KICK HIM IN THE GONADS. Later, in bed, Phil hesitated. You have to assess the situation realistically.

If you’re not going to get away, you don’t want to make it worse for yourself.

Most people weren’t ready to hear that, he explained, so he left it out in class.

That rape was an inevitable fact, like sharks and terrorist attacks, I never questioned.

The first time I cooked for Phil, I made spaghetti al vongole and held my breath, willing the clams to open.

You see? They tell you when they’re ready.

33

Phil tapped a stubborn one, like he was knocking on a tiny door.

Dud, he said. I pointed out where the bin was.

Another night, when we’d stopped counting dates, Phil called my foodblog a vanity project, in a Queer Eye voice, camping it up. I was posting about the PARMIGIANO REGGIANO factory. Seventy per cent of the fields in Parma are devoted to alfalfa for the cows.

Someone who didn’t know Phil might find his comment cruel, but we both knew the cruelty was an act. Part of his martial arts persona. He was mocking the idea of a man who would call my passion a vanity project. Like when he assumed that I’d joined the self-defence class to tone up. Or when he said he’d never fancied a brown girl before, and wasn’t self-defence against my culture?

Later that night, he glanced at me blogging on the sofa and laughed.

Think how much you could make typing at that speed for some city guy.

I laughed until something caught in my throat and I choked. Phil got me a glass of water, and rubbed my back, tenderly.

On my first day working for Mr Blythe, I wear Mad Men heels. My feet slip as I walk, but nothing can dull my excitement. In Starbucks, I watch the people around me ordering with purpose. I’m one of them now. Outside, a woman is begging with her forehead pressed to the pavement. I step over her gingerly, knowing she must sense me and that we will do this every day.

The Blythes’ Office is just off Grosvenor Square, behind a beech tree so leafy, it gives me vertigo. Since Mr Blythe has been confined to a wheelchair he doesn’t come in any more. The office is full of dark furniture. The windows don’t open, so in summer it’s like a morgue.

We do not give financial advice, Lucinda reminds me. What we do is wealth preservation.

The phone rings, but Lucinda doesn’t react. After three rings, I lunge for it, sending the handset flying. I replace it, as if she might not have noticed.

I hover over my desk, which is covered in paper. I pick up a DHL waybill dated 2012.

Where do I put this?

Lucinda smiles, sweetly. Where do you think?

I call DHL and listen to Greensleeves for seven minutes. I get up, slowly, as though the waybill’s home is calling to me.

Hotter, Lucinda calls. Warming, getting warmer.

I move towards the radiator and she shrieks -- freezing!

She seems disappointed when I come to a halt, then sulks for the rest of the day.

Amber Medland publishes her debut novel, Wild Pets, with Faber and Faber in summer 2021

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34

Central Pier 4

Statues of Manchester

From the boat, you point out the home your parents built

Greggs has run out of coffee beans.

Hey — no one’s complaining.

There’s a handwritten note explaining.

I try the Café Nero (it’s raining), and work on a series of screens.

By Helen Bowell

rising through the trees.

Look now. It’s only visible

By Jeremy Wikeley

This could be any European city if it weren’t for the statues. Victoria, Albert, Robert Peel, William Ewart Gladstone. We’re a country apart.

I wonder that you miss me.

from this exact point – then the ferry motors on.

Today the sea is rough.

It thumps as if a shark’s

your means between the islands you’ve always called home.

Outside, under the Jehovah’s Witness stand, a man is fingering a pamphlet.

Transfixed, he highlights each word with a single digit, cigarette floating in his other hand.

While you put down roots in England, on Hong Kong Island blocks of flats

Jeremy Wikeley works at the Orwell Foundation and has been shortlisted for the 2020 Observer/Anthony Burgess prize for Arts Journalism

beating the hull.

Still, you trust in this ferry,

shot up like bamboo. Now floating home on the night crossing, these cloud-kissing towers can be read like columns in a paper, each living room light a Chinese character.

But you’ve been away so long, 阿媽, perhaps tonight you feel illiterate.

When a voice says disembark, you clamber up and look around as if anxious not to leave anything else behind.

阿媽: ah-ma, ‘mum’

Originally published in harana poetry (issue 4).

Helen Bowell is a London-based poet, a co-founder of Dead [Women] Poets Society, and an alumna of The Writing Squad, the London Writers Awards and the Roundhouse Poetry Collective

36

EVENTS Dates to enjoy from the autumn programme

8 October

Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel

Acclaimed biographer Rachel Holmes discusses her major new work on Sylvia Pankhurst, which interweaves the personal and political to create a revealing portrait of one of the greatest unsung political figures of the 20th century.

7–8pm, online via Webinarjam Pay what you can

15 October

Black Spartacus

Sudhir Hazareesingh speaks to Isabelle Dupuy about his essential new biography of the great leader of enslaved peoples, military genius and revolutionary hero Toussaint Louverture; an epic story that draws on a wealth of previously overlooked archival material.

7–8pm, online via Webinarjam Pay what you can (Left to right) Rachel Holmes; Sudhir Hazareesingh. Images: Ruth Crafer; Sudhir Hazareesingh

For details on how to book and take part, go to londonlibrary.co.uk/whats-on or consult the fortnightly e-newsletter

37

30 October

15 November

Join Write and Shine live from The Reading Room for an earlymorning virtual writing workshop.

Writer Gemma Seltzer will guide you through a range of exercises to prompt new creative writing on the theme of “serendipity”, as inspired by the Library’s unique cataloguing system.

Philippe Sands speaks to Elif Shafak about his remarkable new book The Ratline, a meticulously researched investigation that unlocks the mysteries surrounding Nazi fugitive Otto von Wächter’s extraordinary life and death. In partnership with Jewish Book Week and Kings Place.

Write and Shine

7.30–9.15am, online via Zoom, £22

The Ratline: On the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive

7–8pm, Kings Place, London’s Kings Cross and online, £9.50–£15

19 November

The Women Who Spied

Award-winning biographers Clare Mulley and Sonia Purnell speak to BBC journalist Razia Iqbal about the subjects of their recent books: two remarkable women – Christine Granville and Virginia Hall respectively – who spied for the Allies during WWII. In partnership with JW3.

7–8pm, online via Webinarjam Pay what you can

5 November

New Daughters of Africa

New Daughters of Africa is a landmark new anthology celebrating the work of 200 women writers of African descent. Contributors, novelist Maaze Mengiste, poet Karen McCarthy Woolf and writer and broadcaster Yassmin AbdelMagied, read from their work and discuss the legacy that inspires and connects them.

7–8pm, online via Webinarjam Pay what you can

(Clockwise from left) Karen McCarthy Woolf; Clare Mulley; Sonia Purnell; Maaza Mengiste.

Images: Naomi Woddis; John Kerrison; Sonia Purnell; Nina Subin

38

PROGRESS, D E S P I T E T H E PA N D E M I C The Library’s Treasurer, Philip Broadley, reviews the 2019–20 financial year and looks ahead to the continuing effects of the coronavirus pandemic Now available for members to read on the Library’s website, the 2020 annual report tells an interesting, indeed an exceptional story: the Library is continuing to make progress towards achieving its Strategic Plan, yet, in the last month of the financial year, was forced to close by government order for the first time in its history.

As the Library reached the end of the second year of its five-year Strategic Plan, there were positive results from efforts to raise membership and profile while controlling costs, and good progress was made towards the aim of eliminating the operating deficit by March 2023.

Membership grew in each and every month of the year (we cannot easily ascertain when this was last the case), and the net increase in membership was more than four times that of the previous year. It is especially encouraging to see that this growth has been achieved both by increased acquisition of new members and better retention of existing members.

The table below shows a summary of the results of the past three years. Membership fees in the year amounted to £2,781,000 (2019: £2,706,000) and income from trading activities was £61,000 (2019: £41,000); together income

increased on the previous year by 3.5%. The cost of operating the Library, including marketing and communications expenditure, was £4,192,000, a reduction on the previous year of 2.6%, achieved through careful control of costs.

However, the Library’s overall deficit for the year was £1,258,000, driven predominantly by an unrealised loss in the value of our investments of £568,000, and a £382,000 increase in the estimated deficit of the Staff Superannuation Fund. This is a very significant deterioration in the net movement in funds, offsetting the increases of the past two years, and occurred as a

2020

Total

2019

Total

2018

Total

£000

£000

£000

£000

£000

£000

Operating Result Membership and Trading Income Less: related expenditure

2,844

2,747

2,705

(3,759)

(3,852)

(3,835)

(915)

(1,105)

(1,130)

Fundraising Activity Fundraising income Less: related expenditure

722

2,816

1,398

(434)

(398)

(340)

288

2,418

1,058

319

310

240

Gains/(losses) in the value of investments

(568)

808

(170)

Reduction/(increase) in the estimated liability of the pensions deficit under accounting standards

(382)

340

149

(1,258)

2,718

147

Net Investment income

Net movement in funds

The table above shows the Statement of Financial Activity arranged to separate operational results, fundraising activity and investment income. Full details can be found in the accounts.

39

Core Operating Deficit £000s

£860

£900

£450

£487

£558

£737

£675

£225

who expressed their appreciation of the Library’s response by making unsolicited donations. Importantly, memberships continued to be renewed just as new members joined, and at the end of July, the Library had 7,073 members, the highest level since 2014.

I am sure members will be aware that many arts organisations – particularly those that rely on voluntary income and income from ticket sales – have been severely affected by the lockdown. As the annual report sets out, the Library is fortunate to have significant reserves, to own the freehold of its buildings and to have no bank borrowings.

This gives us considerable resilience.

However, the pandemic will continue to have a significant adverse effect on the Library's performance for some time to come. Costs have increased as we have implemented additional safety measures, while some sources of income, for example from events, are much reduced. We therefore ask our members to continue with their

2021*

2020

2019

£0 2018

result of the sharp fall in the value of global stock markets during March.

As of August, markets had recovered significantly from their low point.

Despite the reduction in its funds, the Library has met the Strategic Plan objective to reduce its operating deficit. This is measured by adding net revenue fundraising and investment income to the operating result. The deficit for this year was £558,000 and its steady reduction is shown in the chart to the right.

The effects of the Library’s enforced closure for the first quarter of the year will be more keenly felt in the current financial year to March 2021. Library staff, supported by the Trustees, acted quickly and decisively to minimise the financial consequences of closure while providing members with as full a service as possible. The annual report explains that the Library has taken advantage of available government assistance, principally the Job Retention Scheme, while continuing to pay furloughed staff in full.

Trustees decided to improve liquidity by holding all of the Library’s required reserves in cash for the time being.

The Trustees are grateful to the staff members who volunteered to fulfil members’ postal loan requests during lockdown, for which normal postal charges were waived and borrowing limits increased. The service was maintained for all but a few days, and the number of messages of thanks received shows how much it was valued by members, enabling them to continue their study and relieving some of the burdens of isolation.

At the same time, email communications to members were increased with links to talks and articles. The Trustees are also grateful to members

generous donations to help the Library during this difficult time.

When we re-opened to members on 6 July, we were one of the first libraries in the country to do so. The utmost care has been taken to ensure the safety of staff and members, with measures including a ticketed system to control attendance, socially distanced work areas, a collection system for reserved books, and protective partitions at touchpoints across the building. Wearing facemasks within the Library can be both inconvenient and uncomfortable, but staff appreciate members’ support of all the changes that have been made to maintain an open Library.

It is through the dedication of our staff and the support of members that the Library has been able to fare so well in such an uncertain time. The Trustees thank you all. It is the perseverance of all who hold The London Library dear that will sustain it well into the future, whatever is yet to come.

* Note: The 2021 budget result of £487k allows for the currently anticipated effects of the pandemic

•

40

M EE T A M EM B ER Author and critic Kassia St Clair describes her colourful reading list

I first happened across The London Library when I was working in the Books and Art department of The Economist, as its offices were right next door, and my first book, The Secret Life of Colour, was mostly written while still working there full time. I realised about halfway through that I wasn’t going to meet my deadline without time off, so I spent six weeks at a friend’s house in Italy.

Stuck up a hill and a 20-minute run to the nearest house, I became very adept at using The London Library’s online resources as there were no other options. I couldn’t have written that book without the digital library and I still use it almost daily now.

There’s definitely a joy of walking through the Stacks and discovering things, however, and, very indulgently, my dog walker comes two days a week expressly so that I can work from the Library. Bumping into people I know or who do similar work to me is really invaluable. It’s also a delight to be able to look at historical books there, like Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, a 19th-century guide for scientists and geologists – Darwin took a copy to the Galápagos. Each colour is given comparisons:

“Skimmed-Milk White” is like human eyeballs, the common opal, and the back of the petals of the blue hepatica. The book is so charming and idiosyncratic and the names of the colours are wonderful.

My second book, The Golden Thread, was about textiles, and my next, due in 2022, is about a journey taken by a group of Europeans across two continents in the early 20th century. I’ve found the Library’s first-hand accounts of people who travelled to similar regions at similar times really helpful; what was said about inns and food; things that I hope will bring my book to life. Without giving too much away, I think it is coming at the right time, while my other books are more perennial. But they all ask readers to look again at things we take for granted, and I hope, through telling stories, find unexpected interest and beauty in the everyday.

•

Kassia St Clair is the author of The Secret Life of Colour, 2016, and The Golden Thread, 2018, both published by John Murray

Image: Karolina Kaczynska