Celebrating 180 years of The London Library - Joshua Levine

Over lockdown I began running through central London in the evenings. I’m not fit but I can run slowly in a straight line – and the centre of town was stunning and empty. It will never feel the same again. I began running past my favourite places – only working out what they were as I went. And my final stop, most nights, turned out to be The London Library.

Clearly I was missing it. I’ve been a member since I started making a living as a writer, and I’ve always got more work done there than anywhere else. I was missing all those books I couldn’t find anywhere else – the Library is a gentler, deeper internet. (There’s a thrill in borrowing a book that hasn’t been touched since 1955.) I was missing other members, those lovely, awkward people whose names I’ve never quite learned. I was missing the staff – always helpful and friendly in the face of unreasonable requests. And I was missing the atmosphere.

As I write, lockdown seems to be heading towards some sort of conclusion. Soon I won’t need to run past the Library. I’ll be back inside, probably in my favourite seat by the window on Level Five. But if I look complacent (as I often do) feel free to remind me what the place meant to me when its doors were shut.

Joshua Levine is a historian, broadcaster and writer of, most recently, Dunkirk: The History Behind the Major Motion Picture