Quiet, Please

Last Sunday, the 17th, we visited the British Library – sister institution of the British Museum. It’s in a brand new, very modern building. Being the British equivalent of the Library of Congress, it holds copies of all British books and has huge storage facilities (a large part underground) which are not open to the public. Scholars and researchers, of course, can register with the Library and get access to the “stacks” with the books.

In addition to serving this repository function, though, the Library is part museum, with lots of very famous and irreplaceable documents and volumes on display. There is, of course, the Magna Carta; and a Gutenberg Bible is accompanied by an interesting display about how the process of printing developed. There are dozens of incredibly beautiful illuminated religious books and manuscripts; there are fragments of various books of the New Testament from the 3rd and 4th centuries – some representing the earliest known copies of those books. Several of Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks; Shakespeare’s First Folio; and handwritten (called “autographs” in Library-speak) originals of musical scores by Handel, Beethoven, Mozart and others are all on display.

The public spaces are perfect for a couple of very interesting hours of browsing. And, in keeping with British civilized traditions, there is a fine restaurant and very nice coffee shop, too. But one of our favorite spots was a really great book store – not huge, as you might expect in such an institution – but with a truly fine selection of titles. Between the two of us, there was hardly a single book we wouldn’t have wanted to buy if money were no object (and we had lots of time on our hands). Check some pictures at http://chuck.smugmug.com/gallery/259679