The London Library Summer Party

The Obsessive Diary - 27th June

I always leave full of regret. I don’t know what it is about that place. Could it be as obvious as my father? Cod-psychologists, wheel out your chaise longues and lay me down. I have a problem with the London Library.

I didn’t want to go in the first place. I’ve had a gripe since they didn’t want to promote my debut and a sulk since I failed to make trustee. To give a bit of context to the former, not that it will improve the light but for shame’s sake: my debut told the story of why my father was sold by his mother to his aunt. My father was vice president of the London Library. He donated a large sum for the building of the rare books wing. He loved that place, and that place loved him. It’s in a quiet corner of St James’ Square, a hidden London, its tall and narrow facade belies the vastness of the space within. Virginia Woolf wrote there. Charles Dickens, Bram Stoker, Daphne de Maurier, the list goes on; the London Library wrote the book on illustrious. Beyond its hall and Reading Room where gentlemen have snoozed for generations are the stacks. Mile upon mile of cast iron lace walkways where ladies curse skirts and ghosts haunt and boots have clanged for centuries. Dimmed lighting and spines, alphabets and eyeglasses searching, Penry, Penrose, Pepys. The basement holds the rolling walls of leather bound copies of the Times dating back to god knows when. Probably the beginning. To get one out is use both hands and your back, a thump onto the table and a terror that you’ll tear pages. They’re worth seeing just for how small the print was. How much they fitted on a page. But all this is besides my poor little privileged white girl stamp that he didn’t gift me a life membership before he died and nor did the library step up to help celebrate the novel I wrote about him.