Celebrating 180 years of The London Library - Amber Medland

Before the pandemic, I spent more time in The London Library than anywhere else. When I joined, the Library was the only place I could concentrate and the only place where I felt like a writer first, and a friend/flatmate/daughter/ part-time PA second, and it remains crucial to my writing life. I’ve measured out the lockdowns in postal loans.

While I was writing my debut novel, Wild Pets, I spent two full days a week in either the Reading Room or the Stacks, praying to stumble across books that would help my work. (Such collisions are by no means unusual). I sent the librarians elaborate research questions and they sent me reading lists. My favourite mornings were Saturdays, when there were only one or two other people there, and a kind of wry solidarity between us. The Library gives me creative freedom. The Supported Membership makes it affordable, and I come stocked with snacks and my water bottle. There aren’t many places in London where you can work for eight hours straight without spending anything. Even when I really don’t want to work, I know that if I can get myself to the Library, I will leave feeling enriched.

Among the inaugural London Library Emerging Writers, Medland’s first novel, Wild Pets, is published in July by Faber & Faber