The London Library Magazine - Autumn 2017 Issue 37

MAGAZINE AUTUMN 2017 ISSUE 37

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unravelling knots

The traditional view that there was state control over the portraits of Elizabeth I is examined by John Guy

hidden corners

Marjatta Bell describes the highlights of the Library’s collection of Finnish books

my cloak and dagger family history Elena Lappin on writing a memoir about a family with secrets

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BENJAMIN ANDERSON Narrative of a journey to Musardu.

New York, 1870, First edition, original cloth Estimate £700–1,000 To be sold in ‘The Library of John & Suzanne Bonham’ Auction 26 September 2017

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The Library of an English Bibliophile Part VII

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Travel, Atlases, Maps & Natural History

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Single Owner Irish Collection

Musical Manuscripts

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Fine Autograph Letters and Manuscripts from a

Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts

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English Literature, History,

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The London Library Magazine / issue 37

16

Contents

Elena Lappin’s family history includes migrations between Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East and North America. What she wasn’t aware of until 2002 was that her grandfather was a Soviet agent. Lappin describes the years of research she spent unearthing her hidden roots since that revelation.

7 FROM THE chairman 8 Contributors 10 BEHIND THE BOOK Elena Lappin in Moscow, aged two. Image © family archive.

2 0 Some historians claim that the most celebrated portraits of Elizabeth I were produced under the strict control of the state to ‘sell’ the notion of her as an eternally youthful Virgin Queen who had married her kingdom. John Guy investigates whether the evidence supports the theory.

13 MY DISCOVERY A collection of commentaries by children’s authors describing how and why they write offered Salley Vickers new insights into their craft

16 my cloak and dagger family history

Engraving of Elizabeth I (detail) by Crispijn van de Passe, 1592, after Isaac Oliver. Private collection.

24 Kathryn Hughes, biographer of George Eliot and Mrs Beeton, realised that a conventional writing of a life doesn’t convey the physical presence of a subject.

This led her to try to discover more about bodily quirks and their significance – from an odd sideways walk (Rossetti) to a missing forefinger (Gladstone).

Elena Lappin describes how her identity has been shaped by living in many different countries and the discovery of a family secret

20 Unravelling knots An analysis by John Guy of the depiction of Elizabeth I in her most famous portraits

24 up close and personal Historian Kathryn Hughes describes her research into the physical attributes of well-known Victorians

28 hidden corners Photograph of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (detail), taken by Lewis Carroll in 1863.

28 The Library’s Finnish collection has been greatly enhanced by the generous donation of more than 100 books by the Anglo-Finnish Society to celebrate the centenary of Finnish independence this year. Marjatta Bell describes some notable titles in the collection, such as early travellers’ tales and a rare 1548 edition of the New Testament in Finnish.

Publications on the life and times of the Victorians informed Andrew Lycett’s biography of Wilkie Collins

Marjatta Bell on her pick of the Library’s Finnish collection

32 MEMBERS’ NEWS

‘Arrival in Turku, nineteenth century’ (detail), from Tony Lurcock’s ‘Not So Barren or Uncultivated’: British Travellers in Finland 1760–1830 (2010).

p

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 5

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p from the CHAIRMAN

On the cover

The ‘Armada’ portrait of Elizabeth I (detail), unknown artist, c.1588, Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire/ Bridgeman Images.

It is customary for the Chairman to pen the introduction to the autumn edition. This time there is so much news that I apologise in advance for the brevity of my references to some extremely important contributions to the Library.

As you know, over the summer we said farewell to Tom Stoppard as the Library’s President. Tom has done an enormous amount for us and we have launched a new innovation fund in his name which will ensure that his contribution will live on beyond his stepping down and becoming a Vice-President. I know a number of you have contributed to that fund already, and I hope that many more will be encouraged to do so in the next few months.

I am delighted to say that Tim Rice has accepted the trustees’ invitation to take over as our next President, subject of course to confirmation at the AGM in November. Currently a Vice-President, Tim knows the Library very well and has already been a great supporter: no one can have any doubt about his commitment to the cause. We are equally pleased that Alexandra Shulman has agreed to join us as a Vice-President in November.

There will be more change when Inez Lynn steps down as Librarian in September, after 15 years in post and 29 at the Library overall. Her contribution has been immense. She led the Library into the digital world and, among many other achievements, saw through the complex but hugely successful changes to the building. Inez is embarking on a well-deserved early retirement and you can read more in Sara Wheeler’s interview with her on page 32.

Her successor will be Philip Marshall, who has spent most of his career at the British Museum, responsible, among other things, for its highly successful membership scheme.

And membership remains vital, as our Treasurer, Philip Broadley, notes in his review of the Library’s finances on page 34. On the face of it, the financial position improved this year, but that is primarily the result of good investment performance and a long-expected legacy. Our operating deficit remains too large for comfort. As Inez herself has pointed out, we cannot continue to run operating deficits on this scale and expect to maintain the Library in its current form for future generations.

If the financial section might be a little troublesome to digest, elsewhere there is appetising food for the mind. Andrew Lycett invites us behind the scenes of his biography of Wilkie Collins, and Elena Lappin reflects on her family’s extraordinary history of displacement and migration.

John Guy guides us through the cult of Elizabeth I through her portraits, Salley Vickers suggests some excellent reading, Kathryn Hughes, the author of Victorians Undone, explores what famous names were like in the flesh, and Marjatta Bell surveys the Library’s Finnish collection.

Finally, a thank you to all the hundreds of donors who have supported us so generously during our 175th anniversary year and whose names are printed here with our gratitude.

I hope you enjoy this edition and I look forward to seeing many of you at the AGM on Wednesday, 8 November 2017, between 6pm and 8pm in the Reading Room.

Howard Davies Chairman

Published on behalf of The London Library by Royal Academy Enterprises Ltd. Colour reproduction by adtec.

Printed by Tradewinds London. Published 7 September 2017 © 2017 The London Library. ISSN 2398-4201.

The opinions in this particular publication do not necessarily reflect the views of The London Library.

All reasonable attempts have been made to clear copyright before publication.

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CONTRIBUTORS

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8 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

Marjatta Bell joined the library in 1984

Marjatta Bell joined the Library in order to conduct research on British people visiting Finland for Helsinki: The Innovative City (2002), which she co-authored. A history graduate, she lectured at Helsinki University before moving to London. In the UK she has written books and articles on Finnish history.

She worked for various Finnish organisations and is Chair of the Anglo-Finnish Society.

John Guy joined the library in 2007

John Guy’s books include Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years (2016), shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award, and ‘My Heart is My Own’: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots (2004), which won the Whitbread Biography Award and the Marsh Prize. A screenplay based on his biography of Mary Queen of Scots is in production. He is a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge.

Kathryn Hughes joined the library in 1986

Kathryn Hughes is a historian whose books have won major awards, including the James Tait Black Prize. Her biographies of George Eliot (1998) and Mrs Beeton (2005) were adapted into BBC TV dramas.

She is Professor of Life Writing at UEA and a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Historical Society.

Elena Lappin joined the library in 2010

Elena Lappin is a writer and editor. She has contributed to numerous publications, including Granta, Prospect, the Guardian and the New York Times Book Review. The paperback edition of her memoir, What Language Do I Dream In?, was published by Virago in July. She is former founding editor of ONE, an imprint of Pushkin Press.

Andrew Lycett joined the library in 1988

After an early career as a foreign correspondent, Andrew Lycett has specialised as a biographer, writing lives of Ian Fleming, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins, among others. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Salley Vickers joined the library in 1995

Salley Vickers was a university teacher of literature and a psychoanalyst before turning to writing. Her novels include Miss Garnet's Angel (2000), The Cleaner of Chartres (2012) and Cousins (2016). Her new novel, The Librarian, will be published by Viking in 2018. She now writes full time when she is not reading, daydreaming or looking after grandchildren.

Part Of

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Ralph Steadman (b.1936) The Temptation of Lord Longford. Pen, brush and ink. Signed. 20x28.5 inches.

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 09/08/2017 12:469

Behind the

Book

‘

Andrew Lycett found The London Library’s wide-ranging resources invaluable when he wrote his biography, Wilkie Collins: A Life of Sensation (2013).

’

Andrew Lycett’s Wilkie Collins: A Life of Sensation (2013), paperback edition 2014.

The life and times of Wilkie Collins provide a delightful challenge for a biographer. Although he wrote extensively, he left a lot unsaid, particularly about his personal affairs. The Library’s collections, including its bound volumes of periodicals not mentioned here for reasons of space, helped fill in the gaps.

 Marriage or Celibacy? The ‘Daily Telegraph’ on a Victorian Dilemma

by John N. Robson (Toronto 1995).

S. Marriage.

Having learned his journalistic craft on Charles Dickens’s magazine Household Words, Wilkie Collins took a reporter’s interest in the social issues of his day, which he used as background for his plots. He made liberal use, for example, of the fictional possibilities which arose from inconsistencies in Britain’s marriage laws – a subject of particular regard since he had two families, and wasn’t married to either of the women involved. In 1868 (an important year for Collins, since it marked the publication of The Moonstone), the Daily Telegraph conducted a wide-ranging survey on marriage among its readers.

Over 250 people responded candidly, and their answers, covering aspects such as domesticity, prostitution and working women, have been collected here.  Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England

by Sarah Wise (London 2012). S. Insanity.

Another area which Collins explored as a journalist was mental health, with an emphasis on asylums. Like Dickens he knew many doctors and civil servants specialising in madness. Asylums are at the centre of perhaps his best-known novel, The Woman in White (1860). Wise’s history of the way

10 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

incarceration was used in cases of mental health in Victorian times is a treat.  Mudie’s Circulating Library and the Victorian Novel by Guinevere L. Griest (Newton Abbott 1971). L. English Lit., Hist. of.

The Library has several excellent books on British publishing and authorship in the nineteenth century. This study of how Mudie’s Circulating Library, the Amazon of its day, exploited its market niche by promoting the triple-decker novel and thus affecting the content and tone of Victorian literature, is concise and revealing. When asked by Charles Mudie, the firm’s owner, to change the title of his novel The New Magdalen, Collins objected to ‘this ignorant fanatic … hold[ing] my circulation in his pious hands’ .  Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Thomas Ollive Mabbott (3 vols., Cambridge, MA, 1969–78). L. English Lit. The Moonstone was described by T.S. Eliot as ‘the first and greatest English detective novel’ . But the genre dates back further – to a long story, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ , written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1841.

The Library has different collected editions of Poe. I settled for this handsome Harvard University Press text, with its excellent notes.  Memories of Half a Century: A Record of Friendships, compiled and edited by R.C. Lehmann (London 1908); An Artist’s

Reminiscences by Rudolf Lehmann (London 1894). Both Biog.

Collins is the subject of many juicy anecdotes in biographies and memoirs of his contemporaries. Two of his most enduring friends were the wealthy German Jewish businessman Frederick Lehmann and his wife Nina, daughter of Robert Chambers, the Edinburgh publisher. The Lehmanns’ son R.C. Lehmann (father of novelist Rosamond) compiled this engaging account of his parents’ involvement with many people, including Collins, while his artist uncle Rudolf (Frederick’s brother) noted in his book: ‘Wilkie had gradually brought himself, not only to be able, but absolutely to require, a daily quantity of laudanum a quarter of which would have been sufficient to kill any ordinary person. ’  The Grays of Salisbury by Donald C. Whitton (San Francisco 1976).

A. Painting.

Collins’s father William was a well-known Royal Academician and his brother Charles a fringe Pre-Raphaelite. But his mother Harriet’s family was equally gifted. Her sister Margaret Carpenter was a successful early Victorian artist, while Harriet’s brother-in-law John Westcott Gray’s family spawned several artists, based around Salisbury in Wiltshire. This book offers a fascinating insight into a little-known artistic dynasty.

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MY DISCOVERY The Thorny Paradise: Writers on Writing for Children Edited by Edward Blishen (1975) An anthology of children’s authors discussing their genre was chanced upon in the stacks by Salley Vickers

The Thorny Paradise: Writers on Writing for Children, edited by Edward Blishen (Kestrel Books, 1975).

My first novel, Miss Garnet’s Angel (2000), owes to The London Library my discovery that the story of Tobias and the Angel, apparently first recorded in the Old Testament Apocrypha’s Book of Tobit, was in fact of Zoroastrian origin. So it has become my habit to explore the Library for enlightenment. My forthcoming novel is called The Librarian (2018), so it stood to reason that I should have gone foraging in The London Library in search of likely material.

The protagonist of my novel is a young children’s librarian with a missionary zeal for her subject and her youthful clientele.

She emerged out of my own experience as a child with my local library and a remarkable children’s librarian, who unquestionably affected my own decision to write and to whom I am indebted for the discovery of the Moomin family, George MacDonald and (to my atheist parents’ dismay) the Christendom of Narnia. And while I have not so far attempted that most subtle art – writing for children – it is the children’s writers who shaped and nourished my imagination whom I most revere to this day.

The children’s section at the Library is, alas, relatively meagre, the examples of great children’s fiction haphazard at best (future donors please note). But among the tiny section devoted to the genre’s history, I found a modest brown volume, The Thorny Paradise (1975), which opened to reveal a stellar list of children’s authors discussing their craft and – oh, joy – edited by Edward Blishen, who made me laugh aloud with his columns in the long-gone children’s magazine, The Young Elizabethan.

a child. ’ For all that, ‘the human mind is at its most agile, adventurous, generous and receptive stage during childhood. So the children’s writer is mixing with and working for the Right People. ’ Alongside the general mistrust of adult literature is a common, if sometimes unconscious, sense that the writer for children has preserved in the dark realm of adulthood a magic lantern which keeps alight some essential childlike vision. However, C. Walter Hodges, master illustrator as well as writer, won my respect by announcing, ‘I have never been able entirely to believe in children’ , adding ‘although I can clearly recall being treated as a child, I cannot remember ever feeling like one’ , a perspective that I share.

Catherine Storr, author of the blissful ‘Polly and the Wolf’ books (1955, 1957), suggests that the idea for the stories began as a tale first told to assuage the fears of her daughter, but she soon realised she must keep the telling and the writing separate, because ‘the effect of it having been told was to make the writing stilted as if I felt I had to reproduce the tone of my own voice’ .

I’ll finish with a terrific piece by one of my own childhood heroes. Rosemary Sutcliff, who wrote ‘The Eagle of the Ninth’ trilogy (1954–9), describes her first unpublished childhood novel: ‘I didn’t stop to wonder if it was a book for adults or children; it was just the story I wanted to write, the book of my heart. ’ Later she consigned her immature effort to a bonfire and bitterly regretted doing so.

But ‘it was just the story I wanted to write’ is going to be my new writing guide.

The title is taken from a piece by Barbara Willard (author of A Cold Wind Blowing, 1972), just one among the wry, selfdeprecating and bracing commentaries by the contributors on how or why they write – or, more characteristic of the collection, why they can’t (or perhaps won’t be bothered to) tell us why they do. And it sums up the captivating mixture of an unusual capacity for delight and a certain tart snappishness that characterises these writers.

The first thing that struck me after reading the richly varied contributions is that the one uniform response is a discontent with adult fiction (no plot, no story and, most damningly, the erroneous view that ‘reality’ is best artistically served by the faithful reproduction of so-called ‘real life’). Russell Hoban, who wrote the glorious ‘Frances the Badger’ series as well as luminous adult fiction, is the most scathing: ‘It seems to me that more and more adult novels are not essentially literary. Many of them simply communicate experience and that of itself is not art. ’ He concludes: ‘There are aspects of life that require not to be communicated as experience but to be made into art. And if some writers won’t do it then others will. ’ The latter, in Hoban’s opinion (I agree with him), are mostly the children’s writers.

Some of the authors consider who it is they are writing for, though usually only because they are so plagued by this irksome question. As Nicholas Fisk says, ‘the children’s book market is almost entirely an adult business. Adults commission, review and distribute the writer’s work. The buyer is not very often

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 13

Q. What do Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Joyce and Ivy Compton-Burnett have in common?

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My Cloak and Dagger Family History Elena Lappin discovers hidden stories in her family’s archives In 2002, I received a life-changing phone call from a complete stranger. He rang my London number from Moscow, spoke English with a heavy Russian accent, and could barely control his emotions as he told me that the father who raised me was not my biological father. ‘You are the daughter of Joseph Minster, though your mother knew him as Schneider. He was an American living in Moscow. His father – your grandfather – was a Soviet agent in New York. His name was Leon Minster. ’ The man (‘V’) said he was my uncle by marriage, the ex-husband of my father’s sister. He had made it his life’s mission to find me. With my permission, he would give my number to Joseph, who was now living with his family in New York. I agreed. As soon as we hung up, I rang my parents in Germany to confirm his story.

The consequences of V’s phone call added a new layer of complexity to my life, which had never followed a simple trajectory. I was born in Moscow in 1954, moved to Prague when I was three years old, emigrated to Hamburg as a teenager, then moved again – to Israel, Canada, America and, finally, London. I would need some time to fully understand and accept this revelation, and to share it with my husband and children.

I already knew it was probably true, because the name ‘Leon Minster’ had come up in a biography I had recently read, Whittaker Chambers (1997), by American journalist and historian Sam Tanenhaus. Chambers was a controversial, fascinating figure in American history before and after the Second World War. A key witness in the famous Alger Hiss spy case in 1948, Chambers had undergone 16 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

a transformation from Communist agent to fervent anti-Communist. In one of the chapters about Chambers’ clandestine life as a spy in 1930s New York, I had found a mention of ‘a Russian American, Leon Minster (“Charlie”)’ , a technical worker whose job it was to study secret messages sent from the Comintern in Germany. A footnote referencing the source of this information pointed in the direction of FBI files Tanenhaus had researched, and also to Chambers’ own highly acclaimed memoir, Witness, originally published in 1952. At my request, Tanenhaus kindly allowed me to take a look at a few pages of those files. Most of the text had been redacted, but there was no doubt that Leon Minster was a real person who had played a minor part in GRU (Soviet military intelligence) espionage in the US in the 1930s, and possibly earlier. I found much more information about Leon Minster in Witness, information that was partly interesting and true, partly inaccurate and fanciful. Eventually, I would undertake the systematic disentangling of all the strands in my grandfather’s story.

I had many questions for my parents.

I wanted to know how and why the story of my biological father became a secret, and remained one for such a long time – my entire life so far. I needed to hear from them why I was told the truth by a stranger. And I was deeply curious about Joseph (my biological father) and his side of the family. Yet I was also certain that no matter how well I would get to know Joseph, my love for my father – the one who raised me – would never change.

Several years later, some of these questions were beginning to crystallise into answers that formed an outline of

Above, from top Photo of Leon Minster from his cabdriver’s licence, New York, 1923; Joseph Minster with his father Leon, Brooklyn, 1933 – Leon’s last winter in America? Images © family archive.

Lappin’s childhood in Prague: with her mother Rada Biller (bottom left), and with her brother Maxim Biller (bottom right). Images © family archive.

my own and my family’s history, in all its migrations and incarnations, between Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East and North America. The individual lives of my parents and grandparents reflected the political map of the twentieth century, on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

The only way to truly explore their story – and mine – was to write a book, and so the idea for my memoir, What Language Do I Dream In? (2016), was born. Russian, Czech, German, Hebrew, English: how was my identity shaped by my languages and the cultures they represented, and by the discovery of my hidden roots?

My memoir grew out of two separate

strands: my own life, and the unknown story of the family I discovered in my forties.

I became my own historian, researching in minute detail every aspect of the lives of the grandparents I never knew. It was very important for me to understand why my Russian-born American grandfather became a Soviet spy in 1930s New York, and ultimately returned (or rather was ordered to return) to Russia. Had he not, his son Joseph (born in Brooklyn) would not have met my mother in Moscow in the 1950s, and I would never have been born.

But the depth and intensity of this research really took me by surprise. Perhaps I should have expected it: after all, as a

journalist, I had written several investigative pieces driven by my relentless curiosity and need to uncover the truth behind intriguing stories and characters – especially if they were about hidden identities. And yet, being my own historical detective, compiling, analysing and interpreting a vast collection of archival materials about everything related to my paternal grandfather Leon Minster, became almost an obsession. As one piece of the puzzle led to another, my knowledge of all his activities – in New York, in Shanghai, in Spain – became so detailed and so alive to me that his story threatened to overwhelm and derail my entire book.

Despite his cloak-and-dagger life, my THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 17

grandfather was not a high-ranking spy.

In fact, as spies go, his remit was limited to technical tasks, such as photography, radio communications and clandestine meetings with secret couriers. The first ‘live’ description of my grandfather appears in Chambers’ memoir Witness ; they belonged to the same cell operating out of an apartment in Gay Street in Greenwich Village: A human chain of couriers and contacts stretched across the ocean and the continent of Europe, speeding communications back and forth between Moscow and New York.

The last link which tied that chain to the Gay Street workshop was an underground worker known as ‘Charlie’ … I know now that Charlie’s real name is Leon Minster. For one day I unexpectedly came across his picture in a group of FBI photographs of Soviet agents in the Far East. My identification of him has been confirmed, independently, by someone who also knew him as Charlie.

Charlie was born in Russia but had grown up in the United States, and was an American citizen … He spoke a fluent Russian curiously roughened by overtones of New Yorkese. He had been, intermittently, a cab driver.

As a man, Charlie knew that everybody was against him. And, in the end, that

almost proved to be true, because sooner or later his sullen and distrustful manner alienated most of his co-workers … Charlie had always been a technical worker, and that further embittered his life. As a result, he was extremely jealous of his special skills, imparted them slowly and grudgingly and was especially conscious of his prerogative as custodian of the key to the big trunk.

In the trunk, Charlie kept a Leica camera and a collapsible copying stand, the basic tools of espionage work. And other photographic and chemical supplies.

Chambers goes on to describe how my grandfather – then a young man in his thirties – taught him to reveal invisible Russian writing on microfilm carefully removed from a pocket mirror. These messages were read by a superior and then destroyed. But I was less interested in the technical nature of this task than in the description of Charlie’s character: according to Chambers, he sounded paranoid and bitter. Could these qualities have played a role in his decision to become involved in espionage against the country where his family had fled from Ukraine in 1914, escaping war and persecution as Jews? To his parents and his many siblings, America was the safe promised land. Why did Leon choose communism and the Soviet Union?

Left Shanghai Municipal Police files on Leon Minster’s activities.

Above and right Letter found in Minster’s abandoned Shanghai apartment, from Mortimer Lippman, MD, sent from Brooklyn in 1935.

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To find answers to my questions, I examined everything I could find. I requested all available information from the FBI, under the Freedom of Information Act. Over time, I received hundreds of pages covering many years of the FBI’s surveillance of Leon Minster’s life and activities. I learned to distinguish facts from crude inaccuracies or guesswork – but it all made for very interesting reading.

Even more exciting, however, was the discovery (on the internet) that the National Archives in London had files about Leon Minster’s intelligence work in Shanghai in 1934 and 1935. At this time, he was married with two young children, and the entire family had relocated to China. Leon opened a photography shop selling cameras, but it was clear from the reports that this was a cover for operating a secret radio transmitter.

Through these records, I found that Leon was being closely observed by Shanghai Municipal Police. With the help of The London Library, I was able to obtain these records on microfiche, on loan from a university library in Australia. I spent several weeks in the Library, reading these documents and by the end feeling quite at home in 1930s Shanghai, in its atmosphere of international political intrigue and the sinister presence of agents from various

MY CLOAK and DAGGER FAMILY HISTORY

Left Lappin with her father Semjon Biller in Prague. Photo © Rada Biller.

Above Lappin’s ID photo in 1968–9.

countries. My grandfather was among them, and it was rather gratifying to find his name on a typed list of ‘persons who are shadowed or once were shadowed by the detectives of the Settlements’: ‘Minster, a Russian American, his home address: 20, Daisy Apartment, 6th floor, Route Camelle Lobloz. ’ This address was in the French Concession part of Shanghai.

The list was found upon his arrest on a senior Soviet spy called ‘Joseph Walden’ . Immediately after, Leon Minster was ordered to leave Shanghai with his family, and to travel to Russia, separately.

My grandmother Bessie took the children to Kobe in Japan, and from there to Vladivostok. They were met in Russia by Leon. By 1935, the Minsters were living in Moscow, under new names. Leon (now Grigoriy Schneider) was assigned to two more GRU missions: Finland and Spain.

I have no documentation of these other than family lore, and the knowledge that he remained proud of his Soviet military service. However, he was lucky not to have been arrested or executed, as was the norm for many Soviet agents who had been active in the West. Instead, he worked at menial jobs, and grew increasingly disappointed with the Soviet Union. Far from being the workers’ paradise he had believed in, he found it to be hostile to Jews and oppressive to all. V – who remained in email and telephone contact with me after his initial call – sent me a detailed description of my

grandfather’s grave and its location in a Moscow cemetery, which he urged me to visit: ‘The inscription is in English. ’ Being my own historian involved much more than examining official archival records relating to my grandfather.

I found relatives, distant and close, who told me everything they remembered and everything they had been told by others.

They shared old pictures with me. I was very moved to see photos of my paternal great-grandparents, who had brought the family out of Russia and settled in Connecticut – where they are buried.

I learned to navigate my way around sites such as ancestry.com, where I discovered details about my unknown relatives’ lives: a census, army records, ship manifests. The last were particularly revealing: it turned out that Leon Minster had travelled a great deal between Europe and New York, beginning in the 1920s, especially to Germany and France. Perhaps these journeys marked the beginning of his involvement with the Comintern, and his recruitment for GRU. But my main question – why he had chosen this path – could not be answered by any documents or archives.

The family’s arrival in America in 1914 is recorded on a ship called The Czar. The children’s original Hebrew names are listed, with their ages. By process of elimination, I was able to establish that my grandfather’s name was Israel. This information became completely lost over the years – not even his

own children knew this – until I told them.

Somehow, this felt like closing a circle.

After several years of research, satisfied with having traced and pieced together as much of this hidden family history as I could find, across several languages and continents, I made an even more important discovery: most of it didn’t belong in my memoir. The balance of my narrative was restored as soon as I found a way of distilling this knowledge into just one chapter in my book, entitled ‘The Other Side’ . I felt immensely satisfied and enriched by learning so much about the grandparents I never met, and indirectly about my biological father, but my memoir was about the life I knew, and the story and history of the family who had been, and always would be, my real life force: my parents and maternal grandparents, their joy and their love, as much as their own pain and suffering.

I turned to a different kind of personal history research: the passionate reading of my own family lore. Letters, postcards, books, photographs, diaries, family archives: before there was email and digital photography, there was paper. Despite our multiple moves and migrations, my family has always kept everything. All these written and printed documents in various languages were palpably real witnesses of lives lived and forever present in mine. My memoir is just another link in their chain.

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 19

Unravelling Knots

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John Guy on the evidence of a ‘cult’ of Elizabeth I in contemporary portraits

In Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years (2016) I found myself interrogating the myths and legends surrounding Elizabeth I. One still gnawing at me is her so-called ‘cult’ in portraiture. Tradition holds that as early as her coronation year in 1559 she began ‘branding’ herself as a ‘Virgin Queen’ who had taken her kingdom for a husband.

After that, she and her government are said to have manufactured her portraits to ‘sell’ her monarchy to her people. And as a final act of vanity in her twilight years, she apparently ordered her privy councillors to censor or destroy all images depicting her as old. But does the evidence support this?

We have long understood the defining elements of this ‘cult’: Elizabeth was said to be a second Virgin Mary who by resisting the temptations of the flesh would also prevent its decay. She was ‘Astraea’ – the sacred virgin whose purity and justice would bring about a new golden age. And she was ‘Gloriana’ – an imperial virgin whose destiny is world empire. But as Sir Roy Strong long ago established, such imagery of an iconic virgin only appeared some 20 years into the reign. Until then, Elizabeth’s portraits were chiefly bland, two-dimensional affairs.

Moreover, ‘the pictures commonly made to be sold’ , as the Earl of Sussex complained in 1567, ‘did nothing resemble your Majesty’ .

The ‘Darnley’ portrait of c.1573–5 (named after an eighteenth-century owner) marked the change. Painted from life by an unknown Flemish artist, it intimately reveals Elizabeth’s high-boned cheeks, dark penetrating eyes, elongated and slightly hooked nose and long, slender fingers. At the same time, it conveys a 20 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

The idea of a “Virgin Queen” who had married her kingdom first came into vogue in 1578

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profound awareness of her authority and has underpinned countless claims that her government controlled the precise pattern of her features made available to artists. It is true that in 1563 her chief minister, Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley after 1571, demanded just such controls, going so far as to draft a proclamation.

But Elizabeth blocked the move. Instead, she gave Nicholas Hilliard, the only artist whose work she genuinely admired and for whom she once sat informally outdoors in 1572, piecework commissions as and when she wanted them. She refused to sit for an ‘official’ face pattern. So psychologically wary was she of portraiture, she sat for artists only five or six times during her long reign.

From necessity, artists and their studios resorted to plagiarism, and a face pattern derived from the ‘Darnley’ portrait began to circulate widely among them, presumably for a price. (Since the prime version of the ‘Darnley’ portrait is said to have been

commissioned by Lord Cobham, possibly to display during Elizabeth’s visit to Cobham Hall in late 1573, the ‘master version’ of the pattern would have been owned by the artist.) The dearth of ‘true’ likenesses, meanwhile, threw up the entirely different problem of the proliferation of inferior images of the queen. In 1563, Burghley had complained of ‘the errors and deformities already committed by sundry persons in this behalf’ . But, once more, Elizabeth failed to act.

The pivotal date is 1578. That spring, the queen, aged 45, revived her marriage diplomacy with her last suitor, Francis, Duke of Anjou, seeking a counterweight to the growing threat to herself and the Dutch Protestants from Philip II of Spain. In reply, the opponents of the match – chief among them her favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, a noted patron of artists and stage players – began an orchestrated campaign to stymie it. The idea of a ‘Virgin Queen’ who had married her kingdom first came into vogue that summer, not in portraiture or ‘top-down’ from the queen or Burghley, but incidentally through not-so-subtle allusions in pageants and masques commissioned by critics of the marriage plan, notably Dudley himself. Their belief was that if Elizabeth was thinking of marrying the Catholic Anjou, she would do better staying single.

In 1579 an unidentified artist capitalised on this theme in a series of three allegorical ‘Sieve’ portraits. One purchased by the judge Sir Christopher Wray is now missing, but was vividly described by George Vertue in 1752; the other two are in collections in Washington, D.C. and Florida. Portraits of

The ‘Siena’ portrait of Elizabeth holding a sieve, an emblem of virginity, by Quentin Metsys the Younger, c.1583. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena, Italy/ Bridgeman Images.

this type used the ‘Darnley’ face pattern, but show Elizabeth holding a golden sieve, with a terrestrial globe behind her. Links between the sieve and virginity stem from the story of Tuccia, a Roman Vestal Virgin who proved her purity by carrying water in a sieve from the Tiber to the Vestal’s Temple without spilling a drop. Tuccia makes a noted appearance in Petrarch’s poem The Triumph of Chastity, and among the inscriptions common to this portrait-type is one from Petrarch’s Triumph of Love alluding to the errors made by those enslaved by love.

Later, fuller realisations of the ‘Sieve’ theme include the famous ‘Siena’ portrait, commissioned by Sir Christopher Hatton in 1583. Hatton had opposed the Anjou match to the point where he and Elizabeth quarrelled and she banned him from her presence for a week. He was also a leading champion of crown-sponsored colonisation in the New World and a patron of the queen’s part-time astrologer, John Dee, whose General and Rare Memorials Pertaining to the Perfect Art of Navigation (1577), dedicated to Hatton, had urged Elizabeth to recover a lost overseas ‘British’ empire once ruled by King Arthur. The portrait, by Quentin Metsys the Younger, shows Elizabeth in a black gown shrouded in a veil, her left hand clutching a sieve and her right forearm leaning against a column studded with golden medallions extolling the imperial theme. Behind her, in the foreground of a colonnaded arcade where Hatton makes a cameo appearance, is a globe showing the British Isles suffused with light as ships traverse to and from the New World.

The obvious mistake is to infer that Elizabeth shared Hatton’s views. More likely the opposite is true. Whereas Hatton, Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir Walter Ralegh championed crown-sponsored colonisation, Burghley and the queen were highly sceptical on grounds of cost.

By eulogising the queen in his ‘Sieve’ portrait, Hatton fought a rearguard action, depicting not what he knew she was, but what he believed she could become.

And with Elizabeth unambiguously past the menopause, Burghley also saw the appeal of an iconography of chastity.

It has become fashionable to claim that the ‘Ermine’ portrait in which an ermine, an emblem of chastity, is seen clambering

up the queen’s left arm, was a gift from Elizabeth to Burghley in June 1585 when she stayed briefly at his house. Since, however, no payment for such a portrait can be found anywhere in the royal accounts, it is likelier that Burghley commissioned it himself to display to her as a pledge of his loyalty.

Naturally, given his stance on colonisation, there is no globe. Instead, a golden swordhilt rests on a table and the queen holds an olive branch in her right hand. Signifying ‘justice’ and ‘peace’ , they make the point, as Burghley well knew, that Elizabeth was no warrior queen. At that very same moment, she was striving to broker peace in the Netherlands; and in the anxious months before the Spanish Armada of 1588 sailed THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 21

up the English Channel, her envoys were desperately begging Philip II’s agents for peace at any price.

The three principal surviving versions of the ‘Armada’ portrait of 1588–9 raise a different set of issues. All three have been extensively restored and the one in the National Portrait Gallery has been severely cut down: the horizontal alignment of the boards suggests that it too was originally landscape format like the version at Woburn Abbey (shown on our front cover) and the one acquired in 2016 by the National Maritime Museum.

The brushwork indicates that each is by a different hand, but it is likely that all emanated from the same studio as their composition suggests a shared formula.

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Quite possibly, none is the original, and all three imitate a single master-type now lost.

The portraits depict Elizabeth in ‘imperial majesty’ . Embroidered on her sleeves and skirt is an elaborate design of suns-in-splendour. She sports a golden collar with pendant pearls, partly concealed by an enormous ruff, and rests her right hand on a globe. Beside her elbow stands the arched or ‘imperial’ crown, while to the left and right of her head are seascapes of Sir Francis Drake’s fire-ships sailing out to meet the Armada at anchor off Calais, and of the sinking of the Spanish ships and their destruction off a rocky coastline.

Whoever the artists were, they shared a new face pattern showing a much younger woman. The face is rounder and fuller;

the true shape of Elizabeth’s nose is lost to view; her eyes are larger and less piercing.

This is another image that may well have been carefully choreographed. But if so, the inspiration surely came from an advocate of Atlantic colonisation – perhaps Drake or Ralegh – because in the versions where the globe is fully visible, the fingers of the queen’s right hand point directly to America.

Soon Ralegh can be found cultivating links in poetry and prose between Elizabeth, chastity and the moon goddess Diana, otherwise known as Cynthia or Phoebe (or ‘Belphoebe’ , as Edmund Spenser calls her in The Faerie Queene of 1590), a theme also taken up in jewellery presented to the queen by Drake and in a miniature of her by Hilliard. But it was Sir Henry Lee, for many years the chief impresario of the queen’s Accession Day tilts, who did most to morph such allegorical iconography into a fully fledged ‘cult’ of Astraea and Gloriana. Acting on his own initiative, Lee staged a magnificent closing ceremony in the tilt-yard at Whitehall in 1590 to mark his retirement, one that sought to deify the postmenopausal queen as both a ‘Vestal Virgin’ and goddess incarnate.

In 1592, in readiness for the queen’s visit to his house at Ditchley in Oxfordshire, Lee commissioned Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger to paint a portrait in which the image of a fast-ageing monarch was successfully wedded to an icon of cosmic power. Elizabeth, dressed to kill, stands on a map of England with her feet on the site of Ditchley, wearing an eardrop in the shape of an armillary sphere, a symbol long associated with ‘Virgo-Astraea’ . At the right of the portrait is a sonnet – the text now cropped – proclaiming her to be so omnipotent, she can cause a thunderstorm to clear, as the background illustrates.

This hauntingly lifelike image formed an integral part of the entertainments Lee staged for Elizabeth at his house. She was led to a pavilion where an actor dressed as an old knight lay ‘under a spell’ . Pointing her towards a row of allegorical ‘tables’ (i.e. portraits) hung around the walls of the pavilion, a page invited her to ‘Draw near and take a view of every table’ , because only after she had closely examined ‘those charmed pictures on the wall depending’ could the spell be broken. Almost certainly, the ‘Ditchley’ portrait of her marked the climax of this display.

In a similar vein, Burghley’s successor

unravelling knots as the queen’s chief minister, his son Robert Cecil, commissioned Gheeraerts to paint the ‘Rainbow’ portrait in 1602 to mark her visit to his fine new house on the Strand. The face pattern this time, though, is the so-called ‘Mask of Youth’ . Mainly Hilliard’s work, this image consciously abandoned any attempt to capture the reality of a woman in her sixties. Instead, her features were airbrushed back to become those of a young woman in her late twenties or early thirties.

At Cecil’s reception, a pageant was staged in which a messenger in Turkish dress entered to present Elizabeth with a rich, imperial mantle. In the portrait she is depicted wearing a ruby-jewelled crown with a crescent moon on the top and clutching a rainbow in her right hand, above which appears the legend Non sine sole iris (‘No rainbow without the sun’). But it is her sumptuous mantle, adorned with eyes and ears to indicate her hold over her subjects, that chiefly draws our gaze. This is almost certainly an exact representation of the gift carried by the actor playing the part of the Turkish courier; one side of the mantle in the portrait is of pale silk woven with a fine silver stripe, the other of orange satin, the colour of the sun.

Spin-offs from the 1592 ‘Ditchley’ portrait include a stark studio reworking of its upper half (see right), recently sold at Sotheby’s. The artist makes no attempt to disguise Elizabeth’s true age, and a technical and scientific analysis in 2010 at the University of East Carolina broadly supports the conclusion that this painting derives from the closing years of the sixteenth century. Its existence and that of half a dozen related portraits throws into question the almost universal belief that around this time she ordered all images depicting her as in any way old to be censored or destroyed.

The purported source is a Privy Council order of 1596 amplifying the portraitist George Gower’s role as the queen’s SerjeantPainter. In 1584, Gower and Hilliard had jointly bid to secure a monopoly over royal portraiture, a move Elizabeth rebuffed.

So resistant was she to the whole idea of sitting for an ‘official’ image that Gower’s duties had been largely confined to interior decoration in palaces and law courts and the occasional restoration of damaged paintings. Now, however, he was charged with rectifying the ‘abuse … in unseemly and improperly painting, [en]graving and printing of Her Majesty’s person and

Opposite A 1603 posthumous engraving of the ageing Elizabeth by Crispijn van de Passe. Based on Isaac Oliver’s miniature of 1592 and a censored earlier engraving by William Rogers. Private collection.

Above Elizabeth aged 62 or 63, studio of Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, c.1596. Photograph courtesy of Sotheby’s Picture Library.

visage to her most great offence’ . Except, it is made clear that only grossly inferior images ‘by divers unskilful artisans’ were to be censored or destroyed. Nothing is said about realistic depictions by skilful artists.

And it turns out that first-hand evidence of a bonfire of paintings is lacking. Efforts were evidently made to censor or destroy the earliest editions of an engraving of Elizabeth holding an orb and sceptre by William Rogers, loosely based upon a notorious 1592 miniature of the queen by Isaac Oliver, Hilliard’s pupil. A re-engraved version by Crispijn van de Passe (see opposite) was rushed out after Elizabeth’s death in 1603, in which her facial appearance was softened.

All along, the Privy Council had most likely sought to regulate mass-market engravings rather than paintings.

Far, then, from there being much evidence of Elizabeth ‘selling’ her monarchy through manufacturing portraiture, it seems likelier that her courtiers, acting as individuals, commissioned the vast majority of her most celebrated portraits and determined their iconography themselves. That is not to deny Elizabeth’s unfaltering talent for stage-managing her public appearances.

Artworks were not, however, a passion, in the way they were for her father, Henry VIII. And where censorship is concerned, it would – if only on a purely practical level – have been logistically impossible for privy councillors to enter hundreds of private houses and confiscate unwelcome portraits of her, simply because they made her look old.

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 23

up close and personal Kathryn Hughes looks to relatively untapped sources, including now-forgotten contemporary biographies in the Library, to discover physical details of her Victorian subjects which can sometimes lead to new revelations about their personalities

‘Bio-graphy’ parses as ‘the writing of a life’ , and yet the form itself often seems wilfully indifferent to the vital signs of that life – to breath, movement, touch and taste. Bodies are routinely absent from biographical texts to the point where you’d be forgiven for thinking that men and women of past times floated around in an incorporeal bubble. Instead of noses, bellies and beards there is only vague generic description: a long stride here, a wry smile there. No one ever sneezes or goes to the lavatory or worries about their bald spot.

Forensic detail is reserved instead for the intangible parts of a subject’s life – his great symphonies, her great novels, his religious phase, her unwise love affairs. By the end of a typical biography we are left in little doubt that what matters in life is not the heart in its meaty material state but the metaphorical heart with all its soaring loves and cold, simmering rage.

One consequence of this radical disembodiment is that even the most attentive reader may finish a biography feeling that they’d be hard pressed to pick the subject out of an identity parade.

Of course, books usually contain visual 24 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

likenesses, but those quarter-page blackand-white images don’t show the body in motion, can’t give you much idea of its habitual off-duty slouch, let alone its sound or smell. I have spent many years researching and writing the lives of George Eliot and Mrs Beeton, but I’m still not sure that I would recognise them if they approached me in The London Library Reading Room and plonked themselves down at the opposite desk.

Biography’s sketchy treatment of bodies is a consequence of what academics call the ‘linguistic turn’ . For the last 30 years of the twentieth century, historians and biographers became preoccupied by the literariness of their source material.

Letters and diaries were no longer read simply as documents of record through which to recover a subject’s comings and goings, battles and balls, alliances and feuds. Instead, scholars concentrated on the gaps and repetitions in the writing itself as a way of plotting how identity was forged during the act of putting pen to paper. Letters were treated not so much as urgent bulletins from an individual’s inner world, but as little performances

Photograph of George Eliot, 1858, by John Jabez Edwin Mayall.

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I have spent many years researching the lives of George Eliot and Mrs Beeton, but I’m not sure I would recognise them if they approached me in the Library’s Reading Room

’

in which the correspondent tried on overlapping personae for size – dutiful daughter, romantic lover, literary lady.

Even something as apparently objective as a newspaper report was to be read in a way designed to flush out conscious and unconscious bias. These methods certainly resulted in much being brought to the surface that was previously obscure, but it also meant that the Past, and the people who lived in it, became subsumed into a vast textual web. It was as if bodies, like cabbages, kings, umbrellas, great novels and anything else that routinely crops up in the course of a life history, were reduced to a mere expression of narrative codes and signs.

Before we blame Michel Foucault for grave-robbing the past, it’s only fair to consider the other, less highfalutin, reasons why biographies tend to seem anaemic. The fact is that it is very hard to recover details of how people in the past looked and sounded. Does this seem odd?

Aren’t the Victorians, about whom I write, especially known for being as preoccupied with the state of their bowels as their immortal souls? It’s true, certainly, that

no family letter from the mid-nineteenth century is complete without a rundown of the correspondent’s rheumatism, hacking cough and aching teeth, not to mention those of everyone else in the household.

But while all these interminable details are gold dust if you want to write a book about the experience of being alive in an age without much effective doctoring, they are no good for capturing the subtler experiences of embodiment. A receding hairline, constipation, a poke in the eye, cold sores, menopausal flush, arms that refuse to squeeze themselves into newfangled leg-of-mutton sleeves: these are not the kinds of details that make it on to paper in the nineteenth century, just as they seldom find their way into the Tweets and Facebook messages of today.

Photograph of Charles Darwin, 1881 (detail),

by Elliott & Fry.

Still, we’d be making a huge mistake if we assumed that these silences notate absence. For you have only to think about the conditions in which the Victorians lived to realise that they must have experienced their bodies with an intensity that we can hardly begin to imagine. From the beginning of the nineteenth century British men and women had been piling into the cities from the countryside.

Strangers who would never previously have set eyes on one another increasingly found themselves in an involuntarily intimate embrace at the factory bench, the railway station, the lodging house, the beach or on the top deck of an omnibus. Other people’s THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 25

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Biographies from the 1880s and 1890s reveal that Rossetti had a funny sideways walk

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sneezes, bums, elbows, smells, snores, farts and breathy whistles were, quite literally, in your face. Privacy, in the form of screens, locks, water closets, first-class carriages and single beds, was available only to a privileged few. For everyone else it was a question of raising thresholds of embarrassment and shame to protect against sensory overload. Of course, you could always turn to a physiognomy guide, or an etiquette book, or even the Bible, to tell you how to sort this untidy spill of corporeality into categories that made sense of it all – the clean and the dirty, the pure and the wicked, the rough and the genteel. But even here there were ambiguities, contradictions, collisions of meaning and sense.

It was exactly these ambiguities and contradictions that I wanted to truffle out in my recent book, Victorians Undone (2017). What I was after were those places where the body refused to behave quite as it was supposed to, but insisted instead on bursting through codes of propriety and tact (spinach in the teeth, a scattering of old smallpox scars, a missing finger). I ached to know what people in the nineteenth century were actually ‘like’ – a word that has a long and distinguished heritage in the English language, one that tells of deep presence and profound affinity. Tell me about these people’s books and their battles, their big love affairs and their little meannesses by all means – but how did it feel to catch sight of them across a crowded room, or find yourself sitting next to them at dinner? Did they lean in close and whisper, or stand at a distance and shout? Did they smell (probably, most people did) – but of 26 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

what exactly? Were they natty or slobbish, a lip-licker or a nose-picker?

To ferret out these details I realised I would have to mount a stealth attack on the archives of well-known Victorians.

Clearly it was no good looking in the usual places – the published letters, the wellknown diaries – because bodily traces mostly didn’t appear there. In any case, that material had been so well worked over that it was unlikely that anything new would emerge. I would need to be craftier than that, more oblique, sniffing out references to physical experience in the most unlikely or tangential places.

This is where The London Library came in. For it has an unrivalled openaccess collection of old biographies, by which I mean those written within a few years of a subject’s death, often by a dear friend or relative of the departed.

Although these fat volumes are typically commemorative in tone and full of both bluster and discretion, they are also rich in quirky recollections of people who actually knew the subject, had dinner with him every week, or shared her bed for 30 years. Thus a quick preliminary scan of biographies written in the 1880s and 1890s reveals that Dante Gabriel Rossetti had a funny sideways walk, that George Eliot’s right hand was bigger than her left, and that Alfred Tennyson was careless when it came to matters of personal hygiene. What’s more, the way in which the biographies are shelved sequentially in the Library meant that all I had to do was work my way along the appropriate shelves on

the third and fourth floors. (Magnificent though the British Library is, you need to know in advance what you’re looking for to have any chance of retrieving it through the catalogue from the stacks.) Even better, the fact that these were old books, long superseded by more modern biographies, meant that the volumes I required were seldom out on loan. Here was a treasuretrove of odd but richly suggestive details about famous Victorians by the people who had known them best.

Of course a single source drawn from a secondary text does not constitute proof, or at least not of the kind that any scholar would recognise. But these gleanings from the old biographies were a start. Rossetti’s ‘slopperty’ way of walking could be set alongside someone else’s recollection that whenever the poet-painter lay down he lolled about ‘like a seal on a sandbank’ .

I could then relate this back to a coded reference in another biography that Rossetti had had an operation on his testicle, and this related to a remark in a different biography about how he once confided that years earlier he had suffered an ‘accident’ that resulted in him not being able to have sex. From here I could start trying to find correlating and amplifying references in Rossetti’s letters, all of which have been published in nine wonderfully scholarly volumes.

I repeated the same process with a dozen or so other Victorians, panning for tiny specks of gold in old biographies in the Library, and then following the lead through more and more authoritative sources, like a demented detective. In this way I tracked down wonky noses, crazy beards, luscious mouths, weak chins, a whole set of features with which I could begin to explore what Victorians felt not just about their own bodies but the other people with whom they were increasingly obliged to live cheek by jowl.

I had a long list of physical case histories that I wanted to explore. There was Elizabeth Barrett and her partly African ethnicity, the consequence of her family’s West Indian heritage. And what about Branwell Brontë and his shock of auburn hair, trying to make his professional way in a world in which the suspicion of redheads was rife? That’s not forgetting William Gladstone and his missing forefinger, or Charles Dickens with a tongue that always struck people as

up close and personal

Opposite Photograph of Dante Gabriel Rossetti taken by Lewis Carroll in 1863 at Rossetti’s home in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.

Above Lady Flora Hastings, c.1830.

Engraving by J. Horsburgh after a painting by Kenneth MacLeay.

Right Photograph of William Gladstone by John Jabez Edwin Mayall, 1860s.

too big for his mouth.

In the end, though, I had to narrow my selection down to the five body parts that I thought would take me deepest into the experience of being alive in nineteenthcentury Britain. There was Charles Darwin’s magnificently bushy beard, which he grew just at the moment he was finally prepared to go public with his claim that men and apes share a common ancestor. I also set out to solve that puzzle of why George Eliot’s right hand was so much larger than her left. It turned out to be the result of the years she had spent as a teenager on her father’s farm turning the butter churn. Why, though, did her descendants treat this apparently harmless fact as if it were a shameful secret? From there I took a deep plunge into the court of young Queen Victoria to uncover the scandal of Lady Flora Hastings, an unmarried Lady-in-Waiting

whose stomach was growing suspiciously larger by the day. The outline of the story has long been known, but I managed to locate letters between Flora and her sisters that gave the inside scoop on how it felt to have one’s body become the butt of smutty jokes and leering innuendo. At the other end of the social spectrum was Fanny Cornforth, the secret mistress and model of Rossetti and the woman with the most famously kissable lips in London. Why was the poet-painter so obsessed with women’s mouths, and might it have something to do with the ‘accident’ that he maintained prevented him from having intercourse in the usual way?

Finally I encountered the most ‘undone’ of all my Victorians. One hot summer’s day in 1867 an eight-year-old girl went out to play. Within minutes, ‘Sweet Fanny Adams’ , as the press soon dubbed her, was ambushed and torn to

pieces by a highly respectable young legal clerk. All that was left to identify her was her head. In the records of the subsequent murder trial I uncovered fascinating insights into just how the mid-Victorian medical and legal establishment viewed the bodies of working-class girls and the motives of middle-class men who preyed upon them.

Following these five body parts through the archives has allowed me to get closer to the Victorians than I have ever managed before. What emerges is not, of course, the whole picture, and doesn’t try to be. But I hope that by concentrating on the physical details of what it felt like to be alive 200 years ago, I have brought our great-greatgrandparents out from behind their top hats and crinolines and shown them to be, if not identical to us, then not exactly strangers either.

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 27

HIDDEN CORNERS

tales from finland Marjatta Bell draws on her in-depth knowledge of the Library’s Finnish collection to describe some of its treasures

Tove Jansson’s sketch for her novel Moominland Midwinter (1958), watercolour, 1957. © Moomin Characters.

28 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

When Noël Coward travelled to Finland in 1939 he paid a visit to composer Jean Sibelius at his home, Ainola, north of Helsinki. He recorded the details in his memoirs Future Infinite (1954): ‘We were received by a startled, bald-headed gentleman who I took to be an aged family retainer. He led us without any sign of enthusiasm on to a small trellis-enclosed verandah and left us alone … I remember regretting bitterly my casual approach to classical music and trying frantically in my mind to disentangle the works of Sibelius from those of Delius. After about a quarter of an hour the man reappeared carrying a tray … and then, to my surprise, sat down and looked at us. The silence became almost unbearable … It then dawned on me that this was the great man himself, and furthermore that he hadn’t the faintest idea who I was, who my escort was, and what we were doing there at all. ’ Coward decided to cut the agony short, apologising to Sibelius for the brevity of their visit and saying they had booked lunch at their hotel. This made Sibelius smile for the first time, all three shook hands enthusiastically and at the gate the Finnish composer waved happily as his visitors drove away.

This story of an encounter between the composer of Finlandia and a younger man famous for writing songs such as Mad Dogs and Englishmen is one of the delights to be found in volume 3 of Tony Lurcock’s anthologies, which comprise ‘Not So Barren or Uncultivated’: British Travellers in Finland 1760–1830 (2010); No Particular Hurry: British Travellers in Finland 1830–1917 (2013); and ‘A Life of Extremes’:

‘

The Library’s collection includes the first edition of “Se Wsi Testamenti” , the New Testament in Finnish (1548)

’

The British Discover Modern Finland 1917– 1941 (2015), all located in T. Finland. The selection of extracts drawn from some 70 travelogues on Finland – many of them in The London Library – provide entertaining accounts and comments which reveal not only the development of Finland but also the changing relationship between the British and the Finns.

British travellers have been visiting Finland in significant numbers since the 1760s, mainly with the purpose of exploring Lapland in the country’s northern-most region. Following a bet, Matthew Consett, a young, fashionable Englishman, made the trip, arriving in 1786 in Tornio, a small merchant town that was the gateway to Lapland. His record of the journey, A Tour Through Sweden, Swedish-Lapland, Finland and Denmark in a Series of Letters (1789), is probably the oldest Englishlanguage volume on Finland in the Library. Other British travellers followed in Consett’s footsteps, and between 1839 and 1893 John Murray published many editions of the Northern Europe title in their ‘Handbooks for Travellers’ series, which began in 1836. A few of them, such as the 1865 and 1893 editions, are available in the Library (Guide books, Russia, Murray).

This early British interest in Finland was a surprise for me when I started to explore the Library’s stock of Finnish-related books for the ‘100 Books from Finland’ project, organised by the Anglo-Finnish Society to celebrate the centenary of Finland’s independence in 2017. The Library, an illustrious hub of British cultural life, was considered the most suitable destination for the volumes the Society acquired from

the Finnish Literature Society, the Finnish Literature Exchange, the Finnish Embassy and from private individuals. In January this year the Society was able to hand the collection over to the Library, with titles covering a wide range of topics ranging from Finnish art, architecture and design to history, fiction and topography.

Another unexpected discovery was the Library’s remarkable collection of rare books relating to Finland. These include the first edition of Se Wsi Testamenti, the New Testament in Finnish (1548, Ant.). The Finns estimate that only 70 copies survive, and the Library’s copy is probably the only one in Britain. Relatively rare is Chronicon episcoporum Finlandensium Pauli Juusten, with commentaries by the historian Henrik Gabriel Porthan (1859–62), which lists all the bishops of Finland from St Henry (the Englishman who converted Finns to Christianity in 1155) up to the Reformation, and is an invaluable scholarly reference work on medieval Finland (R. Finland, Eccles. Hist.). Porthan’s 5-volume work on the history of Finland, Finns and the Finnish language entitled Opera Selecta: Skrifter i urval (reprinted 1859–73) is also available online via the Library website.

Later treasures include translations of The Kalevala, the nineteenth-century Finnish national epic compiled from folk poems by Elias Lönnroth (1835, 1849), and Atlas de Finlande 1899, the first ever national atlas to be published.

The Library has a volume entitled Anticipating the Wealth of Nations: The Selected Works of Anders Chydenius (1729–1803), edited by Maren Jonasson and Pertti Hyttinen (2011, S. Political Economy). Chydenius was a Lutheran pastor in Kokkola, a small coastal town on the Gulf of Bothnia. The economy became an urgent political issue in the mid-eighteenth century after Sweden, the mother country, lost her granaries, the fertile Karelian and Baltic provinces, and in 1765 Chydenius published a pamphlet, Den nationale vinsten (The National Gain). In it he argued for free trade and the development of industry, explored the relationship between the economy and society and laid out the principles of liberalism, capitalism and modern democracy. He also defended the freedom of religion and speech and workers’ rights. His theories closely resemble those presented 11 years later by Adam Smith in

Engraving from Se Wsi Testamenti, the New Testament in Finnish (1548).

The Wealth of Nations (1776), and scholars argue that both men had been influenced by the Physiocrats, the French eighteenthcentury economists.

Finland’s links to European intellectual life were strengthened by Chydenius’s contemporary H.G. Porthan, a professor at the Academy of Turku, who acquired for the university’s library a collection of literary works not only in Swedish but also in English, French, German and Russian.

In his lectures he frequently referred to Shakespeare, Samuel Richardson’s novels and Edward Young’s poem Night Thoughts (1742), while the Scottish writer James Macpherson’s ‘translation’ of the Ossian cycle of epic poems had inspired him to study Finnish folk poetry. Nevertheless when the English clergyman Edward Daniel Clarke visited him in 1800 in Turku, Porthan preferred to converse in Latin. In his Travels in Various Countries in Europe, Asia and Africa. Scandinavia (2 vols., 1819, 1823; T. Europe & Gen.), Clarke also mentions that other Finnish professors he met possessed issues of Joseph Addison’s and Richard Steele’s periodical The Spectator, as well as works by several English poets including William Cowper, all in the original language.

The Library’s Finnish collection is dominated by history titles, including works by most of the distinguished Finnish historians, and can be found in H. Finland.

British historians of Finland are also well THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 29

Left An illuminated address to the Russian Tsar by the British on behalf of Finland in 1899, from Pro Finlandia (1899), a collection of facsimiles printed in Stockholm for the Otto Mertz (Berlin) commission in 1899 and one of the highlights of the Anglo-Finnish Society’s donations to The London Library.

Opposite, left to right Marimekko: Fabrics, Fashion, Architecture, edited by Marianne Aav (2003); Finnish Modern Design: Utopian Ideals and Everyday Realities, 1930–1997, by Marianne Aav et al. (1998).

Both images courtesy Yale University Press.

represented. A towering figure is Anthony F. Upton, whose books The Finnish Revolution 1917–1918 (1980) about the 1918 Civil War, and Finland 1939–40 (1974) and Finland in Crisis 1940–41 (1964) about the Second World War, can be claimed to have altered the course of historical writing in Finland. J.E.O. Screen wrote several books about the Finnish armed forces, and his two biographies of Marshall Mannerheim (1970, 2000) are the best of their kind. Basil Greenhill is represented by The British Assault on Finland 1854–55: A Forgotten Naval War (1988), a magisterial work on the Franco-British naval campaign in the Baltic during the Crimean War. He tells how during the British-French attack on 21 June 1854 against the Åland island fortress of Bomarsund held by Finnish and Russian troops, the 20-year-old Charles Davis Lucas of HMS Hecla coolly picked up a live shell from the deck and dropped it into the sea, 30 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

thereby becoming the first person to receive a Victoria Cross.

Recent general histories of Finland include David Kirby’s A Concise History of Finland (2006) and A History of Finland

by Henrik Meinander (2011), both of which are much acclaimed. Kirby has an encyclopaedic knowledge of political developments in Finland since the early nineteenth century. He writes lucidly and provides a detailed analysis of parliamentary elections and governments. Meinander places the history of Finland in a Nordic and European context. His work spans the period from the Ice Age to the year 2006, including the six centuries of Swedish rule (1155–1809) when the fundamental principles of Finnish society were established, as well as the century under Russian rule (1809–1917) when Finland was able to develop her administration, education, economy and industry so that she was mature enough

to gain independence in 1917. Meinander defends Finland’s often-criticised Cold War foreign policy and discusses her postwar economic successes, which led to the country’s integration into the European Union and co-operation with NATO. Another way of exploring Finnish life is through its literature, and the Library’s holdings include several major classics, such as The Songs of Ensign Ståhl (1848, 1860), an epic poem about the SwedishRussian War of 1808–9 by J.L. Runeberg, the Finnish national poet who wrote in Swedish (L. Swedish Lit., Trans.); and Fallen Asleep While Young by F.E. Sillanpää (1939, Fiction), both an ethereal and down-toearth portrayal of the untimely death from tuberculosis of a young country girl, which won Sillanpää the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Seven Brothers by Aleksis Kivi (1870), which is regarded as the first Finnish novel, is a realistic yet humorous survival story about seven orphaned brothers living on a southern Finnish farm, who run away to the Impivaara backwoods. They live there for ten years, and the challenges of such an existence equip them to forge their individual futures within the community after their return to civilisation. The trilogy Under the North Star 1-3 by Väinö Linna was published nearly a century later (1959–62), but could almost be a sequel to Kivi’s novel. The volumes describe the life of the Koskela crofter family between the 1880s and 1950s, and reflect the major ideological and material changes in Finnish society and lifestyle during that period, including the country’s declaration of independence, the Civil War in 1918, the major land and educational reforms of the 1920s, the Winter and Continuation Wars of the 1940s, and the impact of modern technology after the Second World War. Closely linked to this trilogy is Linna’s novel The Unknown Soldier (1954), which the Library has in two editions, one from 1957 (trans. Alex Matson) and the other published in 2015 as Unknown Soldiers

hidden corners

(trans. Frans Liesl Yamaguchi). Linna, who had fought on the front line during the Second World War, describes life in a Finnish machine-gun unit under the leadership of Koskela’s son, Vilho, during the Continuation War against the Soviet Union (1941–4). The book was an immediate bestseller and its realism and humour have won over successive generations; by 2004 it had reached its 60th imprint and sold a total of over 600,000 copies in a country with a population of only 5m.

The lives of the urban upper-middleclass Swedish-speaking Finns feature in several novels in the Library. Henrik Tikkanen’s Snobs’ Island (1975, translated from the Swedish by Mary Sandbach) is a semi-autobiographical novel based on the author’s upbringing in a dysfunctional family. Christer Kihlman, another ‘angry young man’ and scion of the country’s cultural elite whose books created shockwaves in Finland, highlights the perceived rottenness of the Finland-Swedish bourgeoisie in his novels, which include The Blue Mother (1963, English edition 1990), Sweet Prince (1975, English edition 1993) and The Downfall of Gerdt Bladh (1987, English edition 1989), all of which were translated by Joan Tate. The setting is often Lexå (i.e. Borgå/ Porvoo) and the books feature members of the Lindermann and Blaadh/von Bladh fictional families.

The Library has several novels and short stories by Tove Jansson, of which The Summer Book (1972) was Jansson’s own favourite; a 2003 translation by Thomas Teal can be found in Fiction. Dealing with the friendship between a little girl and

her grandmother, it is close in subject to the Moomin children’s stories which made Jansson internationally famous. The Library’s three Moomin volumes, Moomins and the Great Flood (1945), Finn Family Moomintroll (1948) and Moominsummer Madness (1954), located in Children’s Books, tell of a fantasy world where the idyllic bourgeois home of the Moomins is occasionally threatened with apparent danger, which the characters overcome with invincible optimism. Those who are not familiar with Tove Jansson – Work and Love, an excellent biography by Tuula Karjalainen, translated into English in 2014

by David McDuff (Biography), may not know that she was a professional painter and in her youth also a political cartoonist.

There have been few books available in English on the visual arts of Finland until relatively recently. However, in the 1950s and 1960s Finland was one of the leading countries in architecture and design, and about a quarter of the books collected by the Anglo-Finnish Society for

‘

Tove Jansson’s “The Summer Book” (1972) was the author’s favourite

’

the Library comprise works on the fine and applied arts, design and architecture, including Art in Finland from the Middle Ages to the Present Day by Bengt von Bonsdorff et al. (2000), a collection of articles by experts in various fields.

The modernist architect Alvar Aalto is well represented in the Library. Around two-thirds of the Library’s existing titles on Finnish architecture describe his work and include the excellent monograph by Richard Weston, Alvar Aalto (1995). The 100 Books donation features Michael Spens’s title on Aalto’s Viipuri Library of 1927–1935, published in 1994, as well as two good overviews of architecture, 800 Years of Finnish Architecture (1978) by J.M. Richards, with stunning photographs of distinctive buildings from the Middle Ages to the 1970s, and Twentieth-Century Architecture: Finland (2000), a comprehensive catalogue of an exhibition at the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt.

The donation also supplements the Library’s existing titles on Finnish design, with such works as Finnish Modern Design: Utopian Ideals and Everyday Realities, 1930–1997 by Marianne Aav et al.

(1998), a comprehensive treatise on design and applied arts, and monographs on Finnish ceramicists and designers Tapio Wirkkala and Saara Hopea. The Library’s holdings on the fine arts include volumes on Albert Edelfelt and Akseli GallenKallela, two of Finland’s internationally best-known painters. The recent gift features companion volumes on three other major painters, Pekka Halonen, Helene Schjerbeck and Hugo Simberg.

An excellent, if unconventional, overview of developments in Finnish painting and sculpture is provided by The Kalevala in Images, ed. Satu Itkonen (2009), published to mark the 160th anniversary of the publication of The Kalevala. As well as featuring artists’ interpretations of The Kalevala, it also provides background information on the epic, which would be useful for anyone interested in reading one of the Library’s several translations of the epic, the latest being by Keith Bosley in 1999.

It is fitting to end with The Kalevala, as the epic was a vital vehicle for the development of Finnish nationalism.

It inspired some of Sibelius’s greatest compositions and eventually helped to lead Finland towards independence in 1917.

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 31

MEMBERS’ News THANK YOU INEZ LYNN Trustee Sara Wheeler interviews Inez Lynn on the eve of her retirement as Librarian and Chief Executive Inez Lynn joined The London Library in 1988 as a cataloguer, intending to stay for two years. Almost three decades on, she is preparing to retire as Librarian and Chief Executive in September, having presided over one of the most significant periods of change since Thomas Carlyle founded the institution in 1841.

Educated at a convent school in Newcastle, Inez studied classics at Liverpool with subsidiary Italian language and literature. After graduating, she moved to Toronto to follow a year-long course at the Centre for Medieval Studies, returning to Britain to chalk up an M.Litt. in medieval Latin poetry at Pembroke College, Oxford.

After working as a library trainee at the Warburg Institute and elsewhere, and acquiring a postgraduate diploma in library and information studies, Inez rose majestically through staff ranks. ‘I had been in the university sector before coming here,’ she says, ‘and I experienced something of a culture shock. In my first week a man appeared with a note from his employer requesting a book.

The missive ended, “Please give the volume to my footman”.’ As Head of Cataloguing, Inez also had to take over stewardship of an idiosyncratic shelfmark system (who among us does not enjoy its quirks as we pass shelfmarks like S. Flagellation in the stacks?).

Library users can be equally idiosyncratic. Successive volumes of the fabled Suggestions Book in the Issue Hall could be published in their own right and catalogued under S. Comedy.

A noisy political demonstration outside Chatham House next door prompted the comment, ‘I do think the Librarian should do something’. On another occasion a reader wrote, ‘Could the staff perhaps be persuaded to smile at members once in a while?’

Librarian Douglas Matthews penned the reply, ‘Do you smile at the staff?’

Of the many things she has filed under Things They Don’t Teach You at Library School, Inez remembers dealing with a pigeon that plummeted down the chimney of the Sackler Study and warbled loudly in distress. ‘I rang the RSPCA,’ she says, ‘and when they had stopped laughing they told me to shine a torch in the bird’s eyes, which duly immobilised it so I could carry it out’.

The inexorable rise of information technology has presented one of the major challenges of Inez’s career. In her application letter for the Librarian job in 1992 she presciently proposed remote access to catalogues and databases using the Library as a ‘gateway’. On that occasion, the Committee appointed Alan Bell to the top role. Two years later, Inez became Deputy Librarian.

32 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

Expressing her ‘passion for clarity and intelligent service in the library sector’, she duly implemented the deployment of information technology in St James’s Square, as well as introducing retrospective catalogue conversion and preservation of the book stock (before her time, collection care often involved sticky tape).

Crucially, given how dramatically the role of Librarian has evolved and expanded, Inez has kept up her training. In 1998, she took a part-time diploma in employment law and personnel practice. Three years later she applied again for the top job, and got it. ‘Our President, John Grigg, died the day before I became Librarian, which was a shock,’ she says. In 2002 Tom Stoppard stepped into the role. He too retires this year. Inez and Sir Tom have made a formidable team.

She was aware, before taking the Librarian post, of the urgent necessity of acquiring more space to house acquisitions (the Library needs four-and-a-half metres of extra shelving every week). Inez oversaw an ambitious fundraising campaign leading to the acquisition of 22 Mason’s Yard in 2004 – the last contiguous building ever likely to come to market.

Its conversion to T.S. Eliot House presented another titanic challenge for the Library and its users. Ear defenders had to be worn in the Issue Hall, the main entrance had to be sealed off and dirty footprints tracked through almost every room. And that was just the beginning. It was a vastly complicated period for Inez. Between 2004 and 2006 she and her team created a building-development master plan, which segued into the first five phases of works.

The first member survey, a full governance review culminating in a new Charter and Byelaws, the introduction of an internal financial-management function in the shape of the Bursar/ Finance Director post, last year’s Words In the Square festival celebrating the Library’s 175th anniversary, the joint publishing initiative ‘Found on the Shelves’ – these are only some of Inez’s achievements. Philip Marshall, her successor (with the newly minted title of Director), inherits a firm foundation as he faces financial challenges ahead.

Inez has emphasised the unique importance of the ‘atmosphere in which readers feel entirely at home’. She is also rightly proud of the culture shift among staff during her tenure.

‘They are willing collaborators with members,’ she says. ‘From top to bottom. This was something I really wanted to happen.’ Many dozens of trainees who learned their craft under Inez now occupy important library posts elsewhere.

The decision to retire was not, she says, one that was taken lightly. ‘I’ve spent 28 years driving change and innovation, while keeping up with the day job. It hasn’t been easy. As chief cataloguer, my decision to introduce IT was nearly voted down at the AGM. “If you let computers in,” the old guard fulminated, “It will be the end!” Fortunately, at that crucial meeting, Bamber Gascoigne turned the tide. But it has been a privilege to work here, as well as fascinating and highly stimulating.’

What is she going to do in this new phase of her life? ‘Train as a teacher of the Alexander Technique. Return to my interest in medieval Latin poetry. Spend more time riding horses.’

We will miss her. Thank you, Inez, from all of us.

‘the sky all around me as if I am an eagle in an eyrie, the clouds like lace lying over silk’ from Three Sisters, Three Queens

by Philippa Gregory

women’s

NOVEL

competition 2017 1st prize: £5,000

for unpublished women novelists only

Closing date: 18 September 2017 JUDGE: Philippa Gregory

PRESIDENT & VICE-PRESIDENT APPOINTMENTS The trustees are delighted to announce that Sir Tim Rice has accepted the appointment to become the new President of The London Library (succeeding Sir Tom Stoppard who retired as President in July), and that Alexandra Shulman has accepted the appointment to become one of the Library’s Vice-Presidents. Their appointments will be put to the AGM in November for formal confirmation by the Library’s members.

Sir Tim Rice is one of the country’s best-known lyricists and his work in Hollywood and the West End and on Broadway has received worldwide recognition. During a career spanning five decades in music, film and on the stage, he has received three Academy Awards, as well as Golden Globe, Olivier, Tony, Grammy and Ivor Novello awards. A London Library member since 1992, Sir Tim has also been a successful publisher, author and performer. A keen cricketer, he served as President of MCC from 2002 to 2003.

Alexandra Shulman OBE has been a member of The London Library since 2010 and is one of the country’s bestknown magazine editors, working until June of this year for an unprecedented 25 years as Editor-in-Chief of Vogue magazine.

A well-known newspaper columnist and published novelist, Alexandra has also been a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery.

CHRISTMAS CARD 2017 We are delighted that our Christmas card this year will be illustrated by renowned children’s illustrator and political cartoonist Chris Riddell, whose designs will be unveiled when the cards go on sale in October.

Proceeds from sales raise vital funds for the Library. £6.00 - pack of 8 cards & envelopes (excludes postage) On sale from October at reception, or online at shop.londonlibrary.co.uk. A postal order form will be printed in the Winter issue of the Magazine.

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 33

quarter page portrait.indd 1

08/08/2017 15:35:46

UNDERSTANDING THE LIBRARY’S FINANCES At the end of May 2017 the Librarian wrote to all members explaining the Library’s challenging financial position and asking members to encourage others to join. On the face of it, however, the Annual Report and Accounts appear to show that the Library generated a good surplus. The Treasurer, Philip Broadley, reviews the financial year 2016–2017, providing further detail on the financial challenges that the Library continues to face.

2016–2017, but when only looking at the operating result this shows a deficit of £1,157k. So what exactly is meant by the operating result and why is this so important when the Library’s fundraising is going well and the Library’s investments are performing strongly?

The Library’s operating result represents its membership and trading income less the related costs of running the Library.

Membership and trading income is made up of the fees that the Library charges to its members for use of the Library, along with income from hiring out rooms for events to external customers and income and sponsorship from the Library’s own events.

The related expenditure includes the cost of the staff needed to run the Library, maintaining the Library’s premises, and buying new books and electronic media for its collection. The cost of communication and marketing are also included, as these support the recruitment and retention of new members and also the Library’s events. In 2016–2017 both events income and expenditure were higher than usual due to the very successful Words In The Square event that took place as part of the 175th anniversary celebrations, but the net cost of the event was relatively small compared with the overall operating deficit, so does not significantly distort the picture.

Year ended 31 March: 2017 2017 2016 2016 In 2016–2017 the Library benefited from a strong performance in its investments and also £000 £000 £000 £000 saw a reduction in its pension-scheme deficit.

Operating Result However, not every year will see investment gains Membership and Trading Income 2,801 2,599 at such levels. Indeed, one only needs to look

Less: related expenditure (3,958) (3,641) back to 2015–2016 to see an example of a year

(1,157) (1,042) when the value of the investments fell and the pension deficit increased.

Fundraising Activity The Library’s fundraising went well during Fundraising income 1,421 1,330 2016–2017, but a significant contribution to total Less: related expenditure (340) (280) 1,081 1,050 fundraising income was made by two large one

off receipts totalling almost £800k. Though the Investment income

332 317 Library hopes to be able to attract similar levels

of fundraising income in future years, there is no Gains/(losses) in the value of

guarantee that this will be the case, despite the investments 659 (503) obvious generosity of the Library’s supporters.

It is therefore clear that the Library needs Reduction/(increase) in the estimated to reduce its operating deficit to put it on a liability of the pensions deficit under sustainable and stable financial footing, and to accounting standards 116 (137) ensure that it can continue to provide the level of service to its members that it has for the past Net movement in funds 1,031 (315) 175 years.

I have very much enjoyed my first year as Treasurer. I have been a member since 2002 but have inevitably been drawn to St James’s Square far more in the last year than previously.

In many ways 2016–2017 has been a successful year for the Library. May 2016 saw the 175th anniversary since its founding in 1841, and as part of the celebrations the Library launched an appeal which raised almost £100k. In addition the Founders’ Circle programme grew during the year and the Library’s Literary Fund benefited from a further endowment donation of £477k. The Library clearly benefits greatly from the continued generosity of its supporters and I hope it can continue to do so in future. This should not, however, disguise the fact that the Library continues to generate insufficient funds from its membership fees to cover its running costs.

The following table shows the results for 2016–2017, separating out the operational results, fundraising activity and investment income. This information can also be found in the full Annual Report and Accounts.

Overall the Library reported a surplus of £1,031k for

34 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

MEMBERS’ NEWS

ANNUAL REPORT The Library’s Annual Report and Accounts 2016–2017 will be downloadable as a pdf from our website from midSeptember 2017 (via londonlibrary.co.uk/about-us/agmannual-reports).

In the interests of supporting the environment and keeping printing and mailing costs to a minimum, we now use a printon-demand system for those members wishing to receive a physical copy. If you would like a printed copy of the Annual Report to be posted to you, please request one by e-mail (librarian@londonlibrary.co.uk) or telephone (020 7766 4712).

Like many cultural organisations, we tend to find that the costs of what we buy to run the Library rise at a higher rate than published retail inflation levels. The Library already operates very tight cost control and there are no easy ways to reduce expenditure without affecting the service that the Library provides. On the other hand we appreciate that the membership fee is a significant outlay for many members and, as the Librarian explained in her letter to members, plans to address the operating deficit do not include membership-fee rises significantly in excess of inflation.

Increasing the Library’s membership numbers is therefore key to addressing the operating deficit. Since 2008 there has been a net reduction in members of 1,456 and, as the table above shows, in the last ten years there have only been two years where membership numbers have increased. Membership numbers were at their peak back in 2000 at 8,479 and had reduced to 6,569 at the end of March 2017.

It is therefore vital that we boost member numbers back up towards the level that they were in 2000, both by finding members new to the Library and also by retaining existing members. This will not be an easy challenge and the Library will certainly need the support of members to meet it, but the trustees are confident that it can be achieved: we seek only to restore membership to a level that we have seen in the recent past. I hope that members will actively support this goal by recommending the Library to those who might be interested in joining.

At the end of the 2016–2017 financial year the Library’s overall reserves stood at £26.4m, but a significant proportion of these reserves are tied up in the building or have restrictions on how they can be spent, as in the case of the Library’s restricted and endowment funds. The reserves that can be freely spent stood at £4.4m and indeed increased in the year due to the strong investment performance. The trustees consider it to be appropriate to hold this level of free reserves at a time when the Library is experiencing financial challenges, but if the operating deficit continues at its present level the Library’s reserves are insufficient in the longer term to sustain the level of service that the Library currently provides.

Throughout its history the Library has gone through many changes to ensure that it can meet the needs of both existing and new members. Further changes will undoubtedly be needed in the future, but I am confident that with the support of members the Library can continue to evolve, while retaining the unique character that has made it such a sanctuary for reading, writing and thinking since it first opened its doors over 175 years ago.

CONSERVATION CIRCLE LAUNCH At a special event in the Reading Room on Thursday, 2 November 2017, The London Library is launching the Conservation Circle, designed to raise funds to support the conservation work carried out by our Collection Care team.

Based at our in-house studio, the team is responsible for repairs to our collection, ensuring that members can continue reading our valued books for another 175 years. They work tirelessly to ensure that the books, atlases and pamphlets on our shelves are sensitively restored: from fixing page tears with Japanese tissue and covering damaged spines, to creating book boxes for the safe storage of precious or damaged books. The Conservation Circle is an exciting opportunity both to support and discover more about this vital and fascinating work. If you would like to find out more, please visit londonlibrary.co.uk/conservationcircle or contact Rachel Thomas (tel. 020 7766 4719, email rachel.thomas@londonlibrary.co.uk).

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 35

DONATIONS AND BEQUESTS With the Library celebrating its 175th anniversary in May 2016, the list of names of our donors and supporters during 2016–2017 is even longer than usual. The trustees are grateful to all our supporters – those names we are reporting here and those who have given anonymously – for their generous contributions to The London Library during the year ended 31 March 2017.

Donations marked * were received via The International Friends of The London Library, a registered 501(c)(3) charitable corporation.

FOUNDERS’ CIRCLE UK Dickens Debby and James Brice* Howard Davies Miles Morland Basil Postan Sir Timothy Rice Kimberly Samuel Mark Storey Philip Winston (with matching gift from Capital Group) Thackeray David and Molly Lowell Borthwick* Philip Broadley Katherine Bucknell and Bob Maguire The Clore Duffield Foundation Mr and Mrs Jerry del Missier Bill Emmott Adam and Victoria Freudenheim David Lough Sir Tom Stoppard OM CBE Harriet Tuckey Martineau Eleanor Anstruther Lionel Barber James Bartos Jenny Bourne Taylor Nicola Braban Sue Bradbury OBE Marcia Brocklebank MA Consuelo and Anthony Brooke A.J. Cardew Michael Cohen Sir John Gieve Mr Andrew Hine Philip Hooker Dr Sarah Ingham Hugh Johnson Margaret Jones Alan Keat Edward Lam Humphrey Lloyd Alexis and Jane Maitland Hudson Kamalakshi Mehta Barbara Minto Charles Morgan Simon Morris Philip Percival Peter T.G. Phillips David Reade Sir John Scarlett KCMG OBE and Lady Scarlett Peter Stewart Marjorie Stimmel 36 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

Paul Swain J.C. Walton Clive Wright OBE FOUNDERS’ CIRCLE US Dickens Wilson and Mary Braun* John and Kiendl Gordon* Professor William Van der Kloot* Thackeray Patricia and Tom Lovejoy* Gillian and Robert Steel* Martineau Anne H. Bass* Montague and Mayme Hackett* Elizabeth Bennett Herridge* Patricia Holloway Boyd and Nicholas Cary Ruffin* James L. Johnson* Gailen Knox Krug* Judith Goetz Sanger* Douglas Smith and Stephanie EllisSmith* 175TH ANNIVERSARY APPEAL We would like to thank all those who helped make our 175th anniversary celebrations so memorable. This includes our exceptional programme directors and talented contributors to Words In the Square (many of whom graciously waived any fee for taking part), event managers, staff and volunteers, all those who purchased tickets and made additional donations, our bookselling partner Hatchards, and our publishing partner for the ‘Found on the Shelves’ series, Pushkin Press.

Supporters of Words In the Square Lead Sponsor Handelsbanken Event Supporters Bisset Trust Carey Adina Karmel Coutts Gabbitas Education Haworth Tompkins Helly Nahmad London Howard Davies Reuben Foundation St James’s London

175th Anniversary Appeal Ben Akrigg Michael Alpert Peter Anderson Ann Armstrong Anthony Astbury Alan (Alain) Aubry Eric Barendt Nicholas and Diana Baring Geoffrey Barnes Dr George Beckmann Heather Bell Stephen Benson Sam Berwick Kate Beswick Richard Bird Roger Blackstone K.W. Blyth Lucy Blythe D.J. Bowen Professor Sir Alan Bowness Ann Bowtell Sue Bradbury OBE The Deborah Loeb Brice Foundation* Philip and Gillian Broadley Marcia Brocklebank MA Duke of Buccleuch Mark Burton Felicity Butcher Clive Butler Penelope Byrde Carmen Callil David Campbell A.J. Cardew Sir Kenneth Carlisle Richard Carter Sir Bryan Cartledge David Cashdan Bernard Cazenove Michael Cohen Kelly R. Collins* John Wilfred Collis MBE S. Gillian Comins Nicholas Cooper Helen Corlett John Crawley Miss Elizabeth Cretch Ron Crompton J.D.H. Cullingham Robert and Carolyn Cumming Valerie Cumming Susan Darling Lord Davies of Stamford Dr Josu de la Fuente Ph.D. FRCP Caroline de Souza in memory of Jeremy de Souza

Anthony Diamond Dr Paul and Carla Doherty Mr C.A. Donaldson Tom Dowling James Downing David Wilmer Dykes H.H.I. Easterling Dorothy Entwistle Mark Etherton Nigel Falls John Fenwick Barry P. Fernald HRH Princess Firyal of Jordan Dr M. Fishel Jim Fisher Patricia J. Fleming Tamara Follini Sheriff J.O.A. Fraser Barbara Fyjis-Walker Lady Judith Goodison Sir Nicholas Goodison Susan Goodsir John and Kiendl Gordon* Graham Greene CBE Edward Greenwood Richard Greer Lawrence J. Guyer Rosalind Hadden John D. Harkness John Harris Will Harris Rear-Admiral M.G.T. Harris Jacqueline Harrod Barbara Harvey Selina Hastings Penny Hatfield Philip Healy Graham Heathcote Wendy Hefford Robert Henrey* Lady Heseltine Mark Hichens Hélène Hill Pamela Hill Judy Hillman Dr Diane Zervas Hirst J. Hobhouse David Hodgkins M.D. Holmes Richard Holmes Antony Hornyold M. Hosier Geoffrey Hosking Fanny Hugill John Dixon Hunt John Hussey OBE

MEMBERS’ NEWS

Derek G. Hyde David Ireland Jeremy Irons Revd David Ivorson MA (Oxon) Charles Jackson Simon Jenkins P.T. Johnson Margaret Jones M.R. Ry Ravi Kumar, Pillai of Kandamath Alan Keat Denis F. Keeling Janey King Professor Peter Kornicki Mr and Mrs Herbert Kretzmer OBE Paul Laffan Michael Leach Michael Lee Lionel Leventhal Charles Lewis Mr C.K. Liddle David Lodge A.D. Loehnis George Loudon Andrew Lownie Inez T.P.A. Lynn Lady Manning Pamela Marks Stephen Marquardt Professor Stanley Martin CVO Pamela Maryfield William Mason Henrietta McCall Penny and Callum McCarthy Dr Anthony McGrath Revd A.H. Mead Sally Miles Juliet Miller John I. Mitchell Dr Charles More The Hon. Mrs F.F.B. Morgan Richard Morgan Peter Mountfield Allan and Theodora Murray-Jones Vayu Naidu-Banfield Charlotte Nassim in memory of Rosemarie Nathanson Brian Naylor Dr Catherine Nelson David Nicholas Peter P. Nicholson Keith Niemeyer Tatiana Okhotina Edward O’Neill Dr H.M. Page Philippa Clare Parker Eric Pattison Mr Paul Pearson Martyn Pease John Perkins Peter T.G. Phillips Alan Philps Stuart Proffitt Georgina Ralston Isabel Raphael Peter Ratzer Paul Rayment Clive Raymond Piers Paul Read Dr Fred Reid Miranda Rhys Williams Andrew Roberts Peter Rosenthal

Dr Sidney Ross Dr Richard Rycroft David Ryder The Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation Lily Safra Robert Sandell Joseph Sassoon Ann Saunders Ann Schlee Anne Sebba Joanna Selborne Ann Shukman Sandra Shulman Ricky Shuttleworth Mary Ann Sieghart Tim Simon Peter Skala Gordon Snell Tom Soper Antonia Southern Dr Margaret Sparks James Spedding Gerard Sproston James Stainton Sarah Stamford Gillian and Robert Steel* His Honour Eric Stockdale Sir Peter Stothard Patrick Streeter Sir Roy Strong CH Paul and Ulla Sullivan in honour of David and Felicity Lough Jonathan Sumption Malcolm Sutherland Lord Thomas of Swynnerton Michael Thomas QC Sir John Thomson John Thornton Suzanne Todd Patience Tomlinson Robert Tomlinson Alan Toop Louisa Treger Lady Tugendhat Sandor P. Vaci Lord and Lady Waldegrave of North Hill Alison Walker Jennifer Wallace Professor Germaine Warkentin Wilfred Webber Lord Wedgwood Nigel Wenban-Smith Nicholas White Andrew Wickham Sheena E. Will Anthony J.T. Williams Alyson Wilson Frederick Wilson Barry Winkleman Ramsay Wood Vivienne Woolf DEVELOPMENT APPEAL FUND Richard Barber Sebastian Brock Trevor Coldrey The O.J. Colman Charitable Trust Joanne Eysell Richard Freeman Jane Goddard Professor Isobel Grundy

Baroness Hilton of Eggardon QPM John Madell The Viscount Norwich Janet Rennie Peter Rowland Lord Runciman Sir John Sainty Christopher Swinson Jeremy White Ann Williams Revd A.C. Winter ENDOWMENT FUNDS Mrs Drue Heinz Hon. DBE TOM STOPPARD INNOVATION FUND The Golden Bottle Trust Steven and Annie Murphy Reuben Foundation ADOPT A BOOK Jayne Adams Andrew Bradbury Thomas Bushill Olga Dermott-Bond Nigel Falls Zoe Jackman Natalia Jacques Anne Jiricny Caroline Medawar in memory of His Honour Nicholas Medawar QC Dr Bernard Palmer John Powers BOOKBINDING The Aurelius Charitable Trust CHK Charities Ltd Michael Erben Donald Gray John Havard Marianne Hinton The Leche Trust The Doris Pacey Charitable Foundation The Patron’s Fund Alison Sproston Mr J.J. Symons BOOK FUNDS Philip Bovey Sebastian Brock Barnabas Brunner The Dr Michael and Anna Brynberg Charitable Foundation Dr John Burman Jody Butterworth in memory of Ian Butterworth Penelope Byrde Rupert Christiansen FRSL The Louise Edith Collis Charitable Trust Norman Franklin Dr Catherine Horwood The J.P. Jacobs Charitable Trust James Myddelton The Viscount Norwich John Perkins Professor Henry Roseveare Tim Sanderson James Stitt SUPPORTED MEMBERSHIP John Clark The Clore Duffield Foundation

John Colvin The Walter Guinness Charitable Trust Elizabeth Bennett Herridge Philip Hooker Inez T.P.A. Lynn R.D. Macleod Peter T.G. Phillips Robert Sandell Schroder Charity Trust Mr O.B.J. Simmons James Stainton J.C. Walton Ann Shukman G.T. Severin EMERGING WRITERS PROGRAMME The Golsoncott Foundation GENERAL FUNDS Eileen Ashcroft Charles Bland Jared Cowie Howard Davies Judith Flanders Revd M. Fox Anthony and Josephine Layden Barbara Minto P.G.H. Thorold Richard A. Wallington LEGACIES Doris Asher George Girling Grange Will Trust Charles Julian Koenig Russell A. Molyneux-Johnson Derek Pappin Brian Rees Peter Howell Roberts OBE Alec Brian Schofield John Peter Twining During the year the Library also received a substantial grant from the trustees of the R.M. Chambers Settlement.

ROYALTIES The literary estates of John Cornforth, Robert McNair Scott, Ian Parsons and Reay Tannahill have provided income from royalties.

DONATIONS OF BOOKS Thanks are also due to various government and official bodies, learned societies, institutions and firms, and other libraries and publishers who have given their publications, and to the many donors of books and other items, who are listed below: Lucy Abel Smith Académie royale de Belgique Adelphi Edizioni Jeremy Adler Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Göttingen Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz David Alexander David Allin

Continued overleaf THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 37

Donations of Books continued

The Anglo-Finnish Society for Suomi Finland 100 The Antique Collectors’ Club Art Fund William Arthurs Neal Ascherson Anthony Astbury The Authors’ Club Peter Ayrton Claudia Azzola The Estate of Francis Bacon Peter Bagwell Purefoy Martin Bailey Dr Phil Baker Eric Barendt Nicolas Barker OBE Peter Barnes in memory of John Baxter Black Chris Beetles Ltd Antony Beevor Alan Bell Marjatta Bell Hugh Belsey Jonathan Benthall Amanda Benton Roger Billis Mary Bing Robin Blake R. David Blow Dr Frances Borzello John Botts Professor Sir Alan Bowness CBE Simon Bradley Tom Brass Professor Chiara Briganti The British Library British Sociological Association Roger Broad Marcia Brocklebank MA Eleanor Bron The Rupert Brooke Society The Browning Society John Buchan Society Justine Budenz Roberto Calasso Cambridge University Library Ann Carlton Richard Carter Colin Chamberlain Gregory Chambers The Fryderyk Chopin Institute Rupert Christiansen Christie’s City & Guilds of London Art School Catrine Clay The Colonel of the Regiment and All Ranks of the Royal Anglian Regiment The Joseph Conrad Society (UK) Artemis Cooper Dr Richard Davenport-Hines Gillian Davis in memory of Richard Beattie Davis Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society Professor Windy Dryden Dr Michael Dunne Philip Eade Dr Gwilym Eades Dr Brent Elliott Matthew Engel 38 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

Michael Erben David Evans Faber and Faber The Fabian Society Michael Fardell Professor William Firebrace Judith Flanders Kim Fleming Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation The Folio Society Robert Forrest Fortnum & Mason Ken Francis Professor Robert Fraser Susan Freestone in memory of Walter H. Freestone Friends of the Dymock Poets Alan Fyson Gernot U. Gabel German Historical Institute London Sam Gibson Stephen Giddins Peter Gill Charles Glass Netta Goldsmith Sir Nicholas Goodison Daisy Goodwin The Graveson family A.V. Griffiths Groinkers’ Press Dr John Guy Penny Hatfield John Havard Mark Haworth-Booth Margaret Heffernan Fedor Herbatschek Elizabeth Bennett Herridge Hertfordshire Association for Local History Mark Hichens Marianne Hinton Victoria Hislop Paul Holberton David Holohan Philip Hook Christopher Howse John Hughes John Hussey OBE Intentions Sarah Jacobs in memory of Helen Plotz Frank James Mark James Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture Rosemary Jeffreys Derek Johns Ltd The Hon. John Jolliffe Julia Jones Keats Shelley Memorial Association Linda Kelly The Kipling Society Kongeligt Danske Videnskabernes Selskab Malcolm D. Lambert Davina Langdale Philip Law Eric Lee Andrew Lees Denis Lenihan Jason Lever H.M. Liversidge in memory of Denise Silvester Carr

Eleanor Longmire in memory of Paul Longmire Robert Low Andrew Lumsden Inez T.P.A. Lynn Annmarie and Charles MacKay Stephen MacManus Macmillan Eleanor Margolies E. Anthony Martin Andrew Martin Katrina Maskell in memory of Harry Roland Hill The Massachusetts Review Susan Mayor Kinn McIntosh Mary Medlicott Lin Mehmel David Metz Giles Milton Simon Morris Chantal Mouffe in memory of Ernesto Laclau Ferdinand Mount Brian (Barry) Murphy Museo Vincenzo Vela Charlotte Nassim National Trust Michael Nelson New Statesman Clive Norris The Viscount Norwich Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset Oberon Books Murrough O’Brien Helen O’Neill Stephen Ongpin Oxford Poetry Oxford University Press David Palfreyman Revd Canon Dr Trevor Park MBE Peter Parker Penguin John Perkins Christopher Phipps Dr Peter Pickering Marcia Pointon The Anthony Powell Society Dr Cecilia Powell Tristram Powell The Powys Society Proquest Prospect Books David Pryce-Jones Pushkin Press Quercus Marc Quigley-Ferriday Random House Peter Reed Jasia Reichardt Eric Rhode Sophie Richard Rimes House W. Andrew C. Robinson Grace Rose Valery Rose Royal Academy of Arts Royal Anthropological Institute Royal Collection Trust Royal Horticultural Society The Royal Society Royal Society of Literature

Rosemary Runciman Dale Russell William Ryan Andrew Saint Andrew Sargent Michael Sarni Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship Nick Schlee Jonathan Schrager Horst Schroeder Lord and Lady Scott Mary Scott Anne Sebba Victor Sebestyen David Sherlock Elizabeth Siberry Paul Sieveking Gareth Simon David Skilton Sydney Smith Association Timothy d’Arch Smith The Society for Psychical Research The Society of Authors Society of Women Writers and Journalists Sotheby’s Martin Spellman Alison Sproston Mark Stephenson His Honour Eric Stockdale Lady Strabolgi Patrick Streeter Rick Stroud Robin Sutton Tim Symonds John Symons Susan Symons Neville Teller The Angela Thirkell Society Lord Thomas of Swynnerton Sir Richard Thompson Lady Anne Thorne Ann Thwaite Trevor Timpson The Hon. Michael Tollemache Colleen Toomey Barry Turner The late John Twining Unicorn Publishing Group Geoffrey Vevers Stephen Vizinczey Michael von Brentano in memory of Bernard von Brentano Jane Wainwright Parthenope Ward Marina Warner Jeremy Warren Wartski Ltd Peter Watson Lord Wemyss Nigel Wenban-Smith Jerry White Whitford Fine Art The Charles Williams Society Paul Williamson Adrian Wilsdon A.N. Wilson Michael Wilson The Worshipful Company of Horners The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Ann Wroe The Francis Brett Young Society

MEMBERS’ NEWS

Member Events We’re pleased to welcome members to the following events over the autumn.

Member events are free, but places are limited so need to be reserved in advance at londonlibrary.co.uk/ member-events.

SPINOZA: PHILOSOPHY TALK With Harvey Shoolman Wednesday, 13 September 2017 6pm – 8pm Members’ Room What has Spinoza’s complex and seemingly arcane explanatory metaphysics to say to us in the twenty-first century? Harvey Shoolman advocates that Spinoza’s metaphysical system reveals a radically new theory of the existence and operation of mind, and its relation to physical structures within the natural order. eighteenth-CENTURY WOMEN ARTISTS With Caroline Chapman Tuesday, 26 September 2017 6pm – 8pm Members’ Room Caroline Chapman’s illustrated talk, based on her new book, Eighteenth-Century Women Artists: Their Trials, Tribulations and Triumphs (2017), will describe the many obstacles faced by women whose ambition was to become a professional artist.

Examining the careers of over 20 artists, Caroline describes their struggle to obtain training, the life of a busy studio, how women sold their work, and the vital role played by patrons, especially royal ones. She will end with a brief look at the changes brought about for women artists in the nineteenth century.

BEING A WRITER With Travis Elborough and Helen Gordon Tuesday, 10 October 2017 6pm – 8pm Members’ Room The anthology Being a Writer, published in September, is an inspiring assemblage of wit, wisdom and hard-won practical advice from some of the world’s greatest authors, musing on the art of writing and how they came to define themselves as writers. Join its editors, Travis Elborough and Helen Gordon, as they present an entertaining survey of the pleasures and pitfalls of the writing life from the time of Samuel Johnson and Grub Street to the age of Silicon Roundabout and Lorrie Moore.

HOUSE HISTORIES UNCOVERED With Melanie Backe-Hansen Tuesday, 28 November 2017 6pm – 8pm, Members’ Room Author of House Histories (2011) and Historic Streets and Squares (2013), Melanie Backe-Hansen researches the social and often secret history of houses. Revealing the tricks and useful sources that she uses in her work, Melanie will describe some of the stories she has uncovered, including a Nottinghamshire house where Byron engaged in amateur dramatics and a London mansion block used by the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War. ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING Wednesday, 8 November 2017 6pm – 8pm Reading Room All members are invited to attend this year’s AGM. Full details are contained in the separate notice carried with this issue of the Magazine, or online at londonlibrary.co.uk/aboutus/agm-annual-reports.

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 39

FINE BOOKS, MAPS, MANUSCRIPTS & PHOTOGRAPHS

Wednesday 15 November 2017 Knightsbridge, London

MARC ISAMBARD BRUNEL A collection of drawings and ephemera relating to the construction of the Thames Tunnel and other building projects £60,000-80,000 plus buyer’s premium and other fees *

bonhams.com/books For details of the charges payable in addition to the final hammer price, please visit bonhams.com/buyersguide

ENQUIRIES +44 (0)20 7393 3834 books@bonhams.com Closing date for entries Friday 22 September 2017