Celebrating 180 years of The London Library - Daisy Dunn

The London Library was described to me before I joined as a place of high ceilings and sprawling Stacks, deep armchairs and carpet slippers, office-less writers and serious readers. In the decade or so I’ve been a member, I have certainly witnessed more than a few moccasins kicked off beneath the shelves while their owners lose themselves in books. It provides a space away from domestic life where we can be ourselves entirely, and I come here to plunge myself into the worlds I like to write about. The fact that I encounter friends every time I visit only enhances the experience. A writer’s life is naturally very isolated. An impromptu cup of tea in the common room is often as good a fuel to my book-writing as it is to my stomach.

Increasingly, I use the Library into the evenings; seeing plays and attending launches, talks, and parties here, and even dropping in to pick up the odd hardback on my way to dinner. When I was interviewed by a newspaper for the publication of one of my books, it was here that I had my picture taken. As a young woman I think it’s important to have a safe London base.

Over the past year I have missed it terribly. While I can’t wait to visit again, I have benefitted from the postal loans service, which has enabled me to borrow liberally from the Classics and Biography sections. I sit and picture all those books just waiting to be taken out.

A classicist, art historian and critic, Daisy Dunn’s books include In the Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny and Of Gods and Men: 100 Stories from Ancient Greece and Rome