Celebrating 180 years of The London Library - John O'Farrell

I clearly remember my first visit to The London Library. I was about 12 years old and came in with my father who had some books to return. As we were leaving, an elderly man shuffled past whom my father immediately recognised. “Lord Snow!” he blurted out. The slightly alarmed C.P. Snow said “Yes?” and my dad said “May I introduce my son?” And inside I was thinking “Dad, why on Earth are you doing this to us both? I am 12 years old, it is very unlikely that the two of us are going to have a great deal in common.”

I never imagined that many decades later, I would be regularly spotting great authors in that lobby, some of whom I had come to know, and many more that I wished I did. But now I feel part of a community of writers who work and research at The London Library, and I think we all find encouragement or take solace in sharing our creative frustrations. (The collective noun is “a whinge of writers”.)

I have written half a dozen novels at favourite seats way up in the Stacks, I have researched non-fiction books browsing the miles of shelves, and now that I do a history podcast (We Are History with the comedian Angela Barnes) there is no greater thrill than to pick out the perfect book with which to research that week’s subject. My old mate C.P. Snow (“ahem”) enlightened us on politicians in The Corridors of Power, but like him I was to learn that the greatest place for a writer to be is a mile down the road, wandering through the Corridors of Culture. •

The author, scriptwriter and political campaigner has worked as a lead writer for programmes including Spitting Image and Have I Got News for You, and co-hosts the We Are History podcast