Issue 27: Spring 2015

MAGAZINE SPRING 2015 ISSUE 27

ÂŁ3.50

the forgotten writer Adrian Dannatt on the annual celebration of the life and work of Joseph Delteil in a village in rural France

love in the stacks David Hare recalls the making of a period film at the Library

hidden corners A personal selection from the French History collection by Munro Price

failing better Jonathon Green on the state of lexicography

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE AS YOU LIKE IT KING JOHN MEASURE FOR MEASURE RICHARD II THE HERESY OF LOVE

by Helen Edmundson

the oresteia

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NELL GWYNN by jessica swale

RICHARD III in mandarin

MACBETH in cantonese

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The London Library Magazine / issue 27

14

The London Library, with its ‘air of benign neglect’, was the perfect location for David Hare’s film, Heading Home, set in 1940s London and shot in 1991. The playwright looks back to this experience and on his early days as a member. Helen O’Neill continues the theme with her examination of the part the Library has played in novels over the past 150 years.

C ontent s 7 FROM THE LIBRARIAN 8 Contributors 10 BEHIND THE BOOK Gary Oldman and Joely Richardson in a still from the film Heading Home, 1991.

19 Born in poverty in a village near Carcassonne, Joseph Delteil went on to live in Paris, where he became a celebrated writer with a circle of friends that included Max Ernst and Josephine Baker. Adrian Dannatt visited Delteil’s birthplace last August to attend the annual event that celebrates the writer’s life.

13 bibliotherapy Alan Clark’s Diaries help Anthony Gardner to cope with the prospect of the general election

14 love in the stacks The Library has been captured on film and in fiction. David Hare and Helen O’Neill explore the different roles it has played since the 1870s.

Poem by Joseph Delteil, at La Grande Deltheillerie, Villar-en-Val, August 2014.

19 the forgotten writer Adrian Dannatt on Joseph Delteil, the once-celebrated writer who is now remembered only in an annual event in a village in south-west France

22 The Library’s superb collection of titles on the French Revolution is unsurprising, given that the institution’s foundation was directly linked to Thomas Carlyle’s efforts to find the books he needed to write his History of the French Revolution (1837).

There are many more gems in the French History collection, as Munro Price reveals.

Karen Healey Wallace on the Library’s books about Eric Gill she discovered while researching her novel

22 hidden corners Munro Price on the Library’s collection of books on the history of France

24 failing better Editions of Thomas Carlyle’s History of the French Revolution (1837), in H. French Revolutions.

The challenges of compiling a dictionary today, by Jonathon Green

26 MEMBERS’ NEWS

24 The mountainous pile of databases now available to lexicographers sets an almost impossible challenge, and prompts a common reaction among compilers that a dictionary can never be ‘finished’, merely published on an arbitrary date. Jonathon Green offers an insider’s view.

31 EATING OUT

Engraving of Samuel Johnson, from the frontispiece of his A Dictionary of the English Language, 1785 edition.

p

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 5

The Ballet Lover’s Companion Zoe Anderson This engaging book is an up-to-date guide to 140 of the most brilliant ballets seen on the stage today – from Swan Lake to The Firebird and Polyphonia. A separate entry for each ballet provides a wealth of facts and insights, including tips on what to look for during a performance.

Curiosity

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Alberto Manguel

The Letters of Bernard Berenson and Kenneth Clark, 1925–1959 Edited and annotated

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1650–1800 Mark Laird A beautifully illustrated exploration of the quest for order within the garden, and within the natural world, this magnificent book is an invaluable contribution to landscape and horticultural history.

Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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Samuel Palmer Shadows on the Wall William Vaughan This fresh, comprehensive monograph reveals the many influences and resources that made this artist one of the most idiosyncratic painters of English landscapes – and a precursor to 20th-century modernism.

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f rom the L I B R A R I A N With each issue of the Magazine, I look forward to catching a glimpse of the amazing variety of topics our members have been working on recently. This time there is something of a French theme, as Adrian Dannatt turns the spotlight on the writer Joseph Delteil, once hailed as a hero of the Surrealist movement but now largely forgotten outside his native village in rural France. Munro Price follows up with a look at the highlights of our French History collections, which have supported his research on the French Revolution and Napoleon over many years.

Closer to home, we look at other ways of using the Library as David Hare recalls setting his film Heading Home here almost 25 years ago and Helen O’Neill samples a few of the novels in which the Library plays a starring role. (Collecting examples of The London Library in literature has long been a personal hobby of mine, so do send me any examples you come across and I will let you know if you are the first to spot them.)

And if nothing so far catches your eye, how about the delights of biography, lexicography and, just in time for the election, what to read when you are feeling frustrated with politics and politicians …?

On the cover

The chapel at Villar-en-Val, the village near Carcassonne where Joseph Delteil was born in 1894. Photograph (detail) © Pays Carcassonnaise.

Elections of a different kind are also in our thoughts just now as we make our annual call for volunteers to serve as trustees of the Library. Next year we will celebrate the Library’s 175th anniversary, so there has never been a better time to consider helping us define and carry out our plans to mark the occasion with achievement and celebrations. The requirements of the role are set out in Members’ News, where you will also find an extract from the thoughtprovoking speech of acceptance made by Stuart Proffitt, the latest to receive our Life in Literature Award.

Whatever your interests, I hope you will find something to catch your attention and send you to new parts of the Library on your next visit. To help you, we are enclosing a short leaflet about the new version of our catalogue, Catalyst, which incorporates a powerful ‘discovery’ tool, allowing you to search both our print and electronic holdings simultaneously. The guide will help you get started but if it all seems too unfamiliar, our staff are, as ever, ready and waiting to be of assistance.

Inez T.P.A. Lynn Librarian Published on behalf of The London Library by Royal Academy Enterprises Ltd. Colour reproduction by adtec. Printed by Tradewinds London. Published 13 March 2015 © 2015 The London Library.

The opinions in this particular publication do not necessarily reflect the views of The London Library.

All reasonable attempts have been made to clear copyright before publication.

Editorial Publishers Jane Grylls and Kim Jenner Editor Mary Scott Design and Production Catherine Cartwright

Editorial Committee David Breuer Emma Marlow Helen O’Neill Peter Parker Philip Spedding Erica Wagner

Advertising Jane Grylls 020 7300 5661 Kim Jenner 020 7300 5658 Irene Michaelides 020 7300 5675 Development Office, The London Library 020 7766 4704

Magazine feedback and editorial enquiries should be addressed to magazine@londonlibrary.co.uk

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 7

CONTRIBUTORS

Adrian Dannatt joined the library in 1980 Adrian Dannatt is a writer, curator and collector currently based in Paris. For over a decade he worked for the Art Newspaper as their New York diarist. His most recent exhibition and accompanying book was Alexander the Great: The Iolas Gallery 1955–1987 at Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, in 2014.

Photo Maxine Dannatt

Anthony Gardner joined the library in 1991

Photo Elizabeth Vickers

Anthony Gardner is an Irish writer and editor. He has edited RSL – The Royal Society of Literature Review since its launch in 2003, and contributes to magazines including Intelligent Life and Slightly Foxed. His first novel was The Rivers of Heaven (2009), and he has recently completed another, a satire on the surveillance society involving Chinese spies and urban foxes. He is a trustee of the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association.

Jonathon Green joined the library in 1979 Jonathon Green is the world’s leading lexicographer of anglophone slang. His most recent lexicon, Green’s Dictionary of Slang, appeared in 2010. Since then he has written a history of slang, Language!, and a ‘lexicographical memoir’, Odd Job Man (both 2014), but his primary task has been the revision, expansion and improvement of his dictionary, and his attempt to make the expanding database available online.

David Hare joined the library in 1970 David Hare is a playwright and film-maker.

His play Behind the Beautiful Forevers, based on the book by Katherine Boo, is currently showing at the National Theatre, London. His memoir of the first 30 years of his life, The Blue Touch Paper, will be published by Faber in September.

Karen Healey Wallace joined the library in 1991

Karen Healey Wallace was born and raised in New York and educated at Dartmouth College, USA. She came to London to start a career in advertising at Saatchi and Saatchi. Her debut novel, The Perfect Capital, was shortlisted in 2014 for Best Editorial Design in the Design Week Awards and Best British Book in the British Book Design and Production Awards.

Munro Price

The free destination for the incurably curious Tuesday–Sunday until 18.00, Thursday until 22.00 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE Euston, Euston Square wellcomecollection.org/sexology

8 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

joined the library in 1980

Munro Price is Professor of Modern European History at Bradford University, and specialises in modern French history, particularly the French Revolution and Napoleon. He has written numerous books, including The Fall of the French Monarchy (2002), which won the Franco-British Society Literary Prize, and most recently Napoleon: The End of Glory (2014), which focuses on Napoleon’s defeat between 1812 and 1814.

Book now

The Telegraph

Until 10 April 2015 royalacademy.org.uk #Rubens Friends of the RA go free Green Park, Piccadilly Circus Peter Paul Rubens, Tiger, Lion and Leopard Hunt (detail), 1616. Oil on canvas, 256 x 324.5 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes. Photo © MBA, Rennes, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Adélaïde Beaudoin. Exhibition organised by the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Royal Academy of Arts, London, and BOZAR (Centre for Fine Arts), Brussels.

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 9

Behind the

Book

The Biography section of the Library provided Karen Healey Wallace with rich source material about the personal life and artistic achievements of Eric Gill for her recent novel

‘

’

Karen Healey Wallace’s The Perfect Capital (2013).

The type was designed by Jonathan Muddell.

My novel, The Perfect Capital, published by Acorn Independent Press (2013), explores the modern-day relationship between two apparently incompatible people: Maud, a letter-cutter who as a disciple of Eric Gill is equally obsessed with perfect letterforms; and Edward, an unwitting follower of Gill’s imperfect behaviour. I discovered all I needed to know about Gill and his letterforms through the Library’s comprehensive collection of writings by and about him.

 Autobiography by Eric Gill (London 1940). Biog. Gill.

This book helped me to see the world through a letter-cutter’s eyes. Gill’s rational way of thinking underpins this anecdotal history of his life. He explains how his love of letters was mixed with an intolerance of some words, such as ‘hate’ with its absurd mute ‘e’ , and ‘integrity’ which, deriving from ‘integer’ , should simply mean ‘complete’ and not also ‘morally good’ .  Eric Gill by Fiona MacCarthy (London 1989). Biog. Gill.

Personal details about Gill’s life, which were neither morally good nor mentioned by the artist in his autobiography, are unearthed in this important biography. More than the revelations about Gill’s deviant sexual behaviour, I found this a fine example of how biographers deal with material they may not have expected – or even wanted – to find. My novel looks at the modern world, not Gill’s, yet I was similarly led into places I would rather not have gone. I tried to handle them as directly, intelligently and

The spine work and printing of The Perfect Capital was by Smith Settle.

10 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

compassionately as MacCarthy does here.  Essay on Typography by Eric Gill (London 1941). Bibliog. Printing.

This treatise on book design and production convinced me that Gill’s theories should not be restricted to the narrative, but also applied to the physical appearance of my book. The Library’s open access to centuryold books when ‘ragged right’ and ‘goldenratio’ margins were the norm made it easy to understand his design principles. That mine was the only novel shortlisted for two major design awards shows how valid these principles still are.  Mr Eric Gill: Further Thoughts by an Apprentice by David Kindersley (Cambridge 1990). Biog. Gill.

This personal account intimately describes Kindersley’s experience in Gill’s workshop from 1934 to 1936, where close and constant contact between skilled master and untrained apprentice meant that knowledge was subtly imparted rather than directly taught. Kindersley recalls how Gill would never say an effort was wrong but, showing a correct example, would say gently, ‘Here we make an “A” like this’ .  Cutting into the Workshop by Lida Lopes Cardozo Kindersley (Cambridge 2013). Biog. Kindersley, David.

David Kindersley’s workshop is still run in the Gill tradition by his widow, Lida. This brief look into Kindersley’s personal and

working life paints a vivid picture of how that tradition has evolved. I visited Lida’s Cambridge workshop where I learned about sensory details I hadn’t come across in books. Who knew that carving stone is clean and quiet? Or that Hoptonwood stone releases a terrible smell when broken open by the chisel?  The Life and Works of Eric Gill by Cecil Gill (Los Angeles 1968). Biog. Gill.

Had I begun my research with this collection of reminiscences by three people who knew Gill intimately (Cecil was his brother), I would have foreseen the way Gill ended up informing every aspect of my novel. In one of these accounts, the eminent lecturer on typography Beatrice Warde describes the same problem I experienced when trying to isolate a portion of Gill’s work for examination: ‘Either the whole man comes up or else the tweezers slip and you lost what you sought. ’  Eric Gill: The Inscriptions by David Peace (London 1994). Philology, Inscriptions.

Stone inscriptions are the free art etched into the public monuments and buildings we rush past every day. Gill was a prolific craftsman and no one in central London is more than a short walk away from a piece of his work. Take out this comprehensive catalogue of over 900 Gill inscriptions and begin your tour in St James’s Church, Piccadilly, just paces away from the Library.

Debates Talks

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Additional grants Grants in memory of Taner Baybars, Roger Deakin, John Heygate, John C Laurence, Elizabeth Longford, Michael Meyer, Arthur Welton, and by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation are also available.

The K Blundell Trust gives grants to British authors under the age of 40 whose project is for a British publisher. The project must aim to increase social awareness, and can be fiction or non-fiction.

Next closing dates – April 30 2015 and September 30 2015 Full guidelines available from www.societyofauthors.org 020 7373 6642

Further details are given in the guidelines.

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 11

Photo: The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess 2014; David Jensen

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12 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

ATOL PROTECTED

BIBLIOTHERAPY

Anthony Gardner on the book you should read when contemplating the general election

alan clark’s diaries Recently I found myself explaining to a teenager why people become grumpy as they grow older. ‘When you’re young, ’ I said, ‘you look around you and think, “The world is a mess – but never mind, one day we’ll be in charge, and we’ll do things better” . Then eventually the time comes when your generation is in charge – or at least, certain members of it are; and guess what? They make just as much of a mess of it as their predecessors – and the awful thing is that you can’t see any way of stopping them. ’ It is in this despairing frame of mind that I reach for Alan Clark’s Diaries, because they remind me, in the most entertaining way, that however frustrating and ridiculous the world of politics may seem to a layman, it is even worse for an insider.

The diaries’ cardinal virtues are their candour and self-awareness. I suspect that if I had met Clark, I would have dismissed him as an arrogant womaniser with alarmingly right-wing views, but on the page his openness to his own faults makes him tolerable and even endearing.

‘Fool, Clark, ’ is his habitual cry as he chronicles another error of judgement or lapse into temptation. His account of trying to give a House of Commons speech after attending a wine-tasting is a classic.

Clark has the gift of writing amusingly about tedium, and what comes across most strongly is the sheer dullness of the daily grind in ‘the bloody House of C, being yerr’d at the Box by a lot of spiteful drunks, on subjects that bore and muddle me’ . A Minister’s lot is better than a backbencher’s, but he is still ‘a zombie in

invisible handcuffs’ , at the mercy of civil servants who vie to fill his every spare moment with meetings.

Not that there is a shortage of intrigue: Clark’s record of Mrs Thatcher’s downfall will endure for as long as there are daggers to be drawn. What is fascinating is that his chief enemies are fellow Conservatives, while Labour and SDP opponents are accorded grudging admiration. A political party is a monster that eats itself.

Of the three volumes, the first to appear finds Clark at his most sympathetic and unguarded. (Published as Diaries in 1993, it was reissued in 2001 as Diaries: In Power 1983–1992.) In its prequel, Into Politics (2000), he’s a bit too full of himself; by the time he wrote The Last Diaries: In and Out of the Wilderness (2002), he knew that they were more than likely to be published. But together they describe a Faustian arc: seduced by the political world, Clark sees through its hollowness and eventually finds the courage to resign, only to realise that he can’t live without it; he sets about getting re-elected, and succeeds, but by then it is too late – he is too old and ill to achieve anything.

The quintessential episode is that of the Fur Labelling Order (in Diaries: Into Politics). An ardent animal-lover, Clark puts his all into legislation which will highlight the cruelty of leg-trapping.

But as luck would have it, Mrs Thatcher’s constituency is home to some influential furriers, and she is about to make an official visit to Canada. She asks him to drop the issue, and to his bitter shame he does.

Only when he escapes the fetid

Alan Clark’s Diaries (1993).

corridors of Westminster and engages with the natural world does Clark feel fully himself. Flying over Canada, he meditates on the terror of the Northern ice cap, ‘So utterly lifeless and bleak. In the desert there would at least be foxes and insects and little roots waiting to be nurtured by the rain. But the Polar route is all ice cliffs, and pale chasms of depth unknown. ’ The beauty of that final sentence flashes from the page, reminding us of what will endure long after Secretaries of State have been forgotten – and allowing us to believe, as we did when we were young, that poets, not politicians, are the ultimate legislators of the world.

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 13

love in the stacks David Hare made a BBC film in 1991 in which the main character, played by Joely Richardson, worked at The London Library. He recalls the experience of filming Heading Home in the Library and describes the atmosphere of the building then and now.

As soon as I made any money, I joined The London Library. By chance, I was asked at the same time to join MCC, because they were short of members.

Any adult male could just walk in. I refused. It’s odd, because now that cricket is so much less popular, you have to go on a waiting list for ten or fifteen years. Both possibilities arose early in the 1970s when I first wrote a play and

David Hare’s Collected Screenplays, Volume 1 (2002).

14 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

realised that, if I wrote more, I was going to want sometimes to write about the past. I made a swift actuarial decision.

Life membership of The London Library would cost me roughly half my capital.

Never imagining I would still be a dramatist 40 years later, I decided to pay on an annual basis – and have done so ever since.

Naturally I had political objections to the idea of a private library, but what could I do? The public library in the Charing Cross Road took three weeks to get you any title that wasn’t on the shelf. I was most fascinated by the period immediately before I was born.

The most alluring moment is always the one that’s just out of reach. To write about the Second World War, I also had to work at the Wiener Library, which was then housed just off Portland Place.

Because it was smaller than The London Library it was less forbidding and more companionable. In all the years of my membership, I’ve never struck up a conversation with a stranger in The London Library. At the Wiener, however, a chance encounter with Sefton Delmer, the wartime head of black propaganda – who introduced himself to me for no other reason but that I was sitting opposite him – led me to write my first original film for television, Licking Hitler (1978). It opened up a whole second life for me – this time

in cinema rather than theatre.

When, in 1978, I wrote Plenty, a stage play about post-war Britain, Michael Billington, who has been reviewing theatre at the Guardian for almost as long as I’ve been writing it, felt that it smelt too strongly of research. I’m afraid he could even guess my sources. I’d already admitted to gorging on Angus Calder’s The Peoples’ War: Britain 1939–1945 (1969), the best account ever of why soldiers returned home radicalised and determined to throw Winston Churchill out. But I also took home a couple of other books from the Library, one of them Age of Austerity (1963), a collection of miscellaneous essays about the Clement Attlee years, edited by Philip French and Michael Sissons. After a few years I was asked for it back, and couldn’t find it, so I had the humiliation of having to pay for a replacement. After a further few years, I turned up the original, which I still have, though over-stamped in red to say it is indeed my property. Lending-desk discipline was rather more lax in those days. It was more like a club than a library.

In 1991, I made a film for the BBC set in 1947, in which the central character worked at The London Library. I had sworn after Licking Hitler and Plenty never to write about that period again. But I couldn’t resist a piece about Rachmanism and the narrowness of the line between

Gary Oldman and Joely Richardson, still from the BBC’s film Heading Home (1991).

‘

criminality and bohemia. For the film of Plenty, we’d been surprised to get rare permission to film inside the Foreign Office on Gilbert Scott’s extraordinary staircase of colonial murals. But to be allowed into The London Library with a film unit to make Heading Home felt even more transgressive. We had a blissful weekend, with Gary Oldman playing a racketeer who needed to have property registers brought down to the Issue Hall. At one point we even nipped into the stacks.

The most unexpected outcome of transmission was the number of letters I received from librarians all over the country thanking me for my portrayal of their profession. For once, they said, they were not represented as being severe, badly dressed and socially inept. Since the main role was played by Joely Richardson, there was small chance of that. But it was interesting to stumble across such a powerful grievance. I wasn’t out to liberate

The most unexpected outcome of the film was the number of letters I received from librarians thanking me for my portrayal of their profession

’

librarians from stereotypes. All I had done was observe them at The London Library. To a woman, and to a man, they were individual, funny, lively and quite astonishingly efficient. I didn’t know any organisation anywhere run with such flair and spirit, and I still don’t.

Of course I’m sad about the modernising, but that’s from a professional point of view. The 1940s are sailing out of our reach, and it’s becoming more difficult and more expensive to recreate them anywhere. All members of long standing will have mixed feelings about the Library’s recent transformation. The more the stacks are used, the better – that’s the point of them, after all – and a more youthful membership is wholly for the good. But there was once something about the building’s air of benign neglect that was peculiarly heady and creative. The Library is very definitely not ruined. It’s just changed. But at least I caught it on film.

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 15

Telling Stories: The Novelisation of The London Library The Library has made an appearance in fiction as well as film, in titles dating back to the Victorian era, as Helen O’Neill, Archive, Heritage & Development Librarian, has discovered The London Library in David Hare’s film Heading Home is intimate, a place where good manners, common sense and kindness prevail. The Issue Hall and Back Stacks are instantly recognisable but are depicted in a world where computers are confined to Bletchley Park, and neatly arranged bundles of paper record the loan and return of books. Historically captivating, the film is also a record of archival significance.

The Library has been similarly captured in a genre that rose to prominence during the Victorian era. A Library notice from the 1840s catches the novel in mid-flight. Signed ‘by order of the Committee’ it announces that ‘this Library does not undertake to supply the various novels of the day, and any attempt to do so would not be consistent with the objects for which the Library was instituted’ .

This did nothing to quell demand, deter novelists from joining, or prevent the Library’s appearance in the genre. From Mrs Oliphant to Haruki Murakami, the Library has been part of the story over three consecutive centuries.

Two prolific Victorian novelists, Mrs Oliphant in A Rose in June (1874), and Mary Elizabeth Braddon in To the Bitter End (1872), record the arrival of boxes of books from the Library. In her novel of sensation, Braddon gives the contents an airing: ‘the last volume of Froude and Motley, the newest thing in metaphysics, a dark blue octavo filled with questionable verse, the latest French novel. ’ Braddon had tired of writing ‘penny dreadful’ stories because of the ‘crime, treachery, murder, slow poisoning and general infamy required’ , but later generations have shown no such scruples in dispatching protagonists on Library premises. The rolling stacks do the trick in Harriet Waugh’s The Chaplet of Pearls (1997), and a lethal combination of arsenic and the Pre-Raphaelites see off a postgraduate student in Barry Maitland’s Dark Mirror (2009).

Seduction, betrayal and arsenic feature in Aldous Huxley’s short story ‘The Gioconda 16 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

Smile’ (1922), in which a philandering husband is hanged for murdering his wife – a crime in fact committed by a woman with whose affections he had toyed.

Contemplating his fate he ponders the things he will miss, including the ‘narrow lanes between the book shelves in the London Library … exploring the fringes of vast domains of knowledge’ .

In the case of Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story ‘ The Adventure of the Illustrious Client’ (1921), Dr Watson is instructed by Sherlock Holmes to gen up on Chinese pottery, and seeks books and advice from the sub-librarian. In 1963 Ian Fleming sends James Bond into battle with Blofeld in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service with little more than Burke’s General Armory, albeit stamped ‘Property of The London Library’ . John le Carré’s George Smiley takes up occupation of his ‘habitual desk in the London Library’ in 1980 in Smiley’s People, and a decade later A.S. Byatt opens her Booker Prize-winning novel Possession in the Reading Room with the discovery of a Victorian letter secreted in the leaves of a rare book. Joe Rose is seated in one of the leather armchairs in the Reading Room in Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love (1997), when he is filled with

apprehension that the exiting member who had been fidgeting behind him is his stalker.

In Alan Bennett’s novella The Uncommon Reader (2007), the Library supplies books in abundance to the Queen and deals with their destruction by attendant dogs: ‘Patron of the Library, though she was, Her Majesty regularly found herself on the phone apologising to the renewals clerk for the loss of yet another volume. ’ The latest depiction of the Library is not in the text of the story but is infused through the visual and visceral aspects of the book. From marbled end-papers to mottled and waterstained pages, Murakami’s The Strange Library (English edition 2014, translated

by Ted Goossen) is a statement about the book as a physical medium. His novella engages through illustration with book and library history. The London Library is the acknowledged source for much of the ‘rich treasury’ of the illustrative matter, and its iconography is unmistakably present too.

Donating his novel Headlong to the Library in 1999, Michael Frayn inscribed the following fitting tribute: ‘To The London Library, with my thanks for being both the source and the setting of so much that follows. ’

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From left Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love (1997), 2006 edition; Haruki Murakami, The Strange Library (2014).

C U LT U R A L TO U RS F O R D I S C E R N I N G T R AV E L L E R S

Kirker Holidays provide a range of carefully crafted escorted holidays, with fascinating itineraries designed for those with an interest in literature, music, history, art, archaeology, architecture, and gardens. Groups typically consist of 12-22 like-minded travellers, in the company of an expert Tour Lecturer.

THE BEETHOVEN FESTIVAL IN BONN

RUSKIN’S VENICE

A SEVEN NIGHT HOLIDAY | 4 SEPTEMBER 2015

A FOUR NIGHT HOLIDAY | 4 NOVEMBER 2015

The Beethoven Festival is one of the leading music festivals in Germany, with concert programmes stretching far beyond the works of Beethoven alone. Under the direction of Nike Wagner, it attracts today’s finest musicians and orchestras, to the city where Beethoven was born in 1770.

Our visit to Bonn includes the opening concert with Daniel Barenboim, three orchestral concerts, an evening of sonatas for cello and piano, and a piano recital by András Schiff. We stay at the 4* Hilton in Bonn, adjacent to the Beethovenhalle and five minutes’ walk from the historic centre of the city. The holiday will also include visits to Cologne, Königswinter and Brühl.

Price from £2,388 per person for seven nights including return flights to Cologne, accommodation with breakfast, four dinners, one lunch, tickets for five performances, all sightseeing, entrance fees and gratuities and the services of the Kirker Tour Leader.

Cologne

Kirker’s tour to Ruskin’s Venice is led by Dr Nicholas Shrimpton and will follow Ruskin’s developing view of Venice over thirty years between the 1840s and 1870s.

The topics will include Ruskin’s discovery of La Serenissima through its Byzantine, Gothic and Renaissance past. Exploring supernatural Venice, we will study the works of Carpaccio in the Accademia and the Scuola di San Giorgio. We will explore Venice on foot and make use of vaporetti, including a visit to Torcello.

Price from £1,592 per person for four nights including accommodation with breakfast, two dinners, lunch at Locanda Cipriani, all sightseeing, entrance fees and gratuities and the services of the Kirker Tour Lecturer.

John Ruskin - The Ducal Palace, Renaissance Capital of the Loggia, Venice, 1849-50

BUXTON OPERA FESTIVAL

ISTANBUL & GALLIPOLI

FOUR NIGHT HOLIDAYS |13 & 21 JULY 2015

EIGHT NIGHT HOLIDAYS | 13 JUNE & 20 SEPTEMBER 2015

The 2015 programme includes Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor,Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco and Louise by Charpentier. Elijah Moshinsky directs the Verdi and Stephen Barlow, Festival Director, conducts the Donizetti.

Buxton is one of the prettiest festival venues, surrounded by Derbyshire’s glorious Peak District. Performances are given in the exquisite Frank Matcham Opera House, just a few steps from our hotel, The 3* Old Hall. We will also visit Renishaw, the seat of the Sitwell family, and Tissington Hall, the family home of the FitzHerbet family.

Price from £1,098 per person for four nights including accommodation with breakfast, all dinners, first category tickets for three operas, ticket for one chamber concert and one literary talk and the services of the Kirker Tour Leader.

Buxton Opera House

April 1915 saw the beginning of the catastrophic British campaign to wrest control of the strategically crucial Dardanelles from the Ottoman Empire. By January 1916, 56,000 Allied lives had been lost, including a huge number from Commonwealth countries.

This tour sets out to bring some sort of understanding to one of the most badly planned and managed battles in all military history.

5 nights will be spent in Istanbul at the 4* Hotel Arena, a 19th Century Ottoman house located five minutes’ walk from the Blue Mosque. A further 3 nights will be spent in Çanakkale.

Price from £1,885 for eight nights including return flights, accommodation with breakfast, six dinners, four lunches all sightseeing, entrance fees and gratuities and the services of the Kirker Tour Leader.

Blue Mosque

Speak to an expert or request a brochure:

020 7593 2284 quote code XLO www.kirkerholidays.com

viewings every Sunday & Monday

MONIKA VERIOPOULOS & ALEXANDRA BUHLER

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Drawings and Paintings 20th May – 6th June 2015

Sale of Books, Manuscripts & Maps Wednesday 25th March at 1pm

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auction day free valuations

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18 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

THE FORGOTTEN

WRITER

The memory of the once-famous French writer and former Surrealist Joseph Delteil, who died in 1984, is celebrated annually in an obscure hamlet in France, as Adrian Dannatt describes

Everyone loves a forgotten writer, and the greater their fame and more utter their subsequent obscurity, the sharper our bitter-sweet pleasure. This is not merely a base case of schadenfreude but surely also some disguised resignation to our own insignificance. Ultimately the essence of any library is this: shelf upon shelf of failure, towering stacks of the unloved and unknown, all of which have somehow survived, still might be read once again, redeemed.

The fall of Joseph Delteil is all the more poignant because, despite the excessive equation of his once celebrity and current neglect, his fame is still kept alive in one minuscule village, an abandoned hamlet in the deepest profondeur of ‘la France profonde’ , Villar-en-Val. Delteil was born here in 1894, and for the last 20 years the author has been fêted every August with an event entitled La Grande Deltheillerie, initially launched as a celebration of his centenary in 1994.

The occasion is named after one of the best known of his books, La Deltheillerie, which – with its ‘h’ added just for smoothness of sound – could loosely be translated as ‘The Compendium of Me’ or something even more swaggering. As a title this might be the equivalent of a writer such as Martin Amis or Peter Ackroyd, both of whom he somewhat resembles, putting out a memoir entitled Amisiana or The Ackroyderie. This late addition to his canon, published in 1968, was hailed as a comeback for the septuagenarian author, and even at that time provoked much discussion as to why Delteil should have become quite so forgotten, as if his destiny was for

Joseph Delteil, 1972. Photograph by Pierre Calmettes.

his work to be endlessly rediscovered and then plunged back again into the abyss of oblivion.

Villar-en-Val certainly does its bit, mustering its limited resources to celebrate its most famous son. The village has a community of only some 30 residents, whose population during La Grande Deltheillerie swells to several times that – indeed genuine crowds, thousands – for the popular evening concerts. To be found, with difficulty, 30 kilometres south of Carcassonne or 60 west of Narbonne, lost in the hills of the Corbières, Villar-en-Val has just one main street, proudly named, of course, rue Joseph Delteil. It also boasts a striking château and a rural chapel on its outskirts, with picturesque rolling vistas on

every side. Its cultivated and dynamic Mayor, Magali Arnaud, happily continues the tradition of La Grande Deltheillerie, which was set up by her late father.

If you follow the winding road leading out of the hamlet into the hills you will eventually come to the farmhouse in which Delteil was born. Carry on from there into the surrounding forest and up to the darkest bosky heart of the hill, and you will stumble upon the collapsed stone shack in which the author spent his early years. Delteil came from a world of desolate rural squalor almost unimaginable today, which makes his subsequent fame as one of the most fashionable, and richest, Parisian writers all the more remarkable. He lived in this ramshackle hovel in the forest because his father was a charbonnier, a charcoal-burner, the lowest of the low in that once strict hierarchy of country caste. Many celebrated authors have exaggerated the lowliness of their origins, but anyone who has made the pilgrimage to his childhood home can attest to the almost medieval penury of Delteil’s youth.

The ever-itinerant famille Delteil moved on, and the author went to school in nearby Pieusse. After studying in Limoux and Carcassonne, he followed that classic arc of the Republican meritocracy and came to Paris to make his fortune. It was here, at the age of 28, that he published his first novel, Sur le Fleuve Amour, to immediate acclaim, not least that of Louis Aragon. Delteil was recruited by the nascent Surrealist movement and hailed as a hero by André Breton for being more extreme, more scandalous, than any of them. His next book, Choléra (1923), about the erotic triangle THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 19

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Like some Brigadoon, this sleepy hamlet only really comes alive every August, as if reanimated by the spirit of its one famous citizen

of three teenage sisters, is still considered the one true Surrealist novel, even winning André Gide’s amused approval. However, with the publication of the first of his many bestsellers, Jeanne d’Arc, in 1925, Delteil was thrown out of the Surrealist group for daring to write on such a reactionary subject. The book was equally attacked by the Catholic Church, which was outraged by the avantgarde exuberance of its prose and inherently comic tone. Beginning a long association with the cinema, Delteil went on to write the scenario for Carl Dreyer’s 1928 silent film, La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, which was closely based on his own book if altogether more sombre in tone. Starring the French actress Maria Falconetti as well as Michel Simon and even the notorious playwright Antonin Artaud, it has been consistently listed as one of the best films ever made, and was voted the most influential film of all time by the curators of the 2010 Toronto Film Festival.

Delteil was a prolific author and some of his most successful books mined a similar vein in exploring wildly, inventively, sacrilegiously, various historic personalities, not least St Francis of Assisi, and Christ in the wonderfully named Jésus II (1947), a direct influence on Don DeLillo’s title Mao II (1991). Delteil was essentially a humanist rather than a Catholic, a born radical rather than a traditionalist, and his most consistent cause, his lifelong pursuit, was his own prose, a flexible, poetic, supple and sometimes preposterously rococo riff with which he made as many enemies as devoted readers. Wicked, witty, fleetingly wise, naughtily paradoxical, poised perhaps somewhere between Vladimir Nabokov and G.K. Chesterton, like any great prose stylist Delteil makes you feel that you have discovered him all for yourself, that you are a rare and privileged connoisseur, that somehow this was written just for you and your superior sensibility alone. Delteil’s prose is not easy to translate, and though 20 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

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many of his titles appeared in English during the author’s lifetime – notably Joan of Arc, translated in 1927 by the critic Malcolm Cowley, and The Porcelain Junk (1928), which inspired the current indie musician Porcelain Raft – they are hard to find today. Likewise, although there have been some five books about Delteil, including biographies, critical studies and even a bibliography, and scholarly studies which continue to be published, there is precious little to be found out about him in English.

Every book put out by Delteil was an event and he was regularly featured in the newspapers, as well as the literary journals of the era, not least for a series of high-profile love affairs, and for his much-publicised arguments with some of the leading cultural figures of the day, beginning with Breton.

Delteil became all the more famous when after his numerous amorous adventures he married the Chicago heiress Caroline Dudley, as famed for her beauty as her wealth. More importantly Dudley was the founder and director of the Revue nègre, a celebrated stage show that brought all the major African-American performers

to France, where many of them decided to stay. The biggest of these stars was Josephine Baker, a lifelong close friend of Delteil, but he was equally intimate with a whole range of black American dancers and musicians, especially Sidney Bechet, and as such Delteil features strongly in the history of the AfricanAmerican diaspora in Paris.

Delteil was also close to numerous visual artists, from his original Surrealist cohorts such as Max Ernst and André Masson, to Jules Pascin, Marc Chagall and Jean Dubuffet, collecting work by many of them as well as collaborating on books. One of his most modish projects was the fashion show Soirée du Claridge in 1924, featuring costumes designed by Sonia Delaunay that were inspired by one of his poems. During the war, by which time Delteil and Dudley had already moved back to the south, to Grabels near Montpellier, they befriended a young man, Pierre Soulages, nurturing his artistic ambitions and generously introducing him to their circle of creative contacts. Aged 95 and widely celebrated as France’s greatest living artist, with his own brand-new eponymous museum in Rodez, Soulages still cites Delteil as the man who began his career.

These many elements of Delteil’s extraordinary existence are all honoured during the long weekend at Villar-en-Val. Even if his public profile has been in steady decline since his death in 1978, his books are still in print with Grasset. His one-volume collected works (in itself a joke by the author as he deliberately left out some of his most important texts) and such individual tomes as Choléra and Jeanne d’Arc were displayed

The ruins of Delteil’s childhood home, outside Villar-en-Val. Photograph by Bertrand Petit.

the forgotten writer

Left and above Event at La Grande Deltheillerie, August 2014, photograph by Bertrand Petit; Joseph Delteil’s Jeanne d’Arc (1925).

on a village stall at last summer’s event. The evening meals, served at long communal tables down the length of rue Joseph Delteil, are a central part of La Grande Deltheillerie, where one meets the actors, musicians, critics and historians whom one has seen earlier paying homage to the great man. One central figure is Philippe Forcioli, a writer, performer and singer renowned for his astonishing dramatic stagings of choice passages from Delteil. Forcioli also helped set up the Sentier en poésie , lining the route through the forest to Delteil’s stone hut with panels and signs displaying selected aphorisms and witticisms by the writer, which are chosen for their resonance with the landscape or for their sheer bravura.

Thus, with a view of grazing foals in a field one reads on a wooden panel that ‘Un cheval hennit quelque part jusqu’ à la fin du monde ’ (A horse whinnies somewhere until the end of time).

This ‘poetry path’ ends in a clearing, a sort of natural amphitheatre next to the ruins of Delteil’s childhood home. At last summer’s Deltheillerie, the people who made their way here were treated to an improvised clown show by actor Christophe Allwright, who emerged from the forest like some tree sprite. He was here to entertain, along with his father, the revered singer-songwriter Graeme Allwright. The latter’s concert was accompanied by the Belgian troubadour

Julos Beaucarne, and followed on from the previous night’s viola da gamba performance by Jordi Savall, the renowned musician who first came to fame playing in the film Tous les matins du monde (1991).

In fact these evening musical events are what La Grande Deltheillerie is best known for, having featured over the decades such major talents as Nilda Fernandez, Mans de Breish, Paco Ibáñez and the great Georges Moustaki.

While holiday crowds gather from all over the region for these open-air concerts, where each performer makes a point of quoting or mentioning by name the titular saint of this festival, the daytime events gather a smaller and more studious audience. Last summer these activities included a conference with the writer Jean-Louis Malves, author of Alphabet pour Joseph Delteil (2005), and a musical lecture based around Delteil’s classic novel set in the First World War, Les Poilus (1926). There were also day-long marathon readings from selected works, the kora player Prince Diabaté in the festival tent, and a visit to the studio of Christian Bastian, a Parisian painter in exile who occupies the farmhouse where Delteil was born.

Like some Brigadoon, this remote and sleepy hamlet only really comes alive every August, as if reanimated by the spirit of its one famous citizen, who almost nobody has ever heard of. As a literary

holiday destination the area has much to recommend it. Carcassonne contains the house-museum of Joë Bousquet, a war invalid poet whose own fragile reputation might rival that of Delteil. In fact the ‘Don Delteil’ , the late author’s 1984 donation of art and antique furniture, is a feature of the Musée des Beaux Arts of Carcassonne, a curious collection of minor Dutch masters and Empire bibelots. Villar-en-Val is also only a short drive from Lagrasse, which hosts a literary festival every summer.

As if Delteil’s fall from grace were not already sufficient, his obscurity not complete enough, it now seems that 2014, his 120th birthday, may have been the last Grande Deltheillerie. A combination of municipal budget-tightening and organisational exhaustion may have put a natural end to this tradition, thus guaranteeing the almost complete extinction of his reputation. Or not quite, for three of his books can still be found on the shelves of The London Library: his novel Sur le Fleuve Amour, from 1922 ; the original edition of Jeanne d’Arc from 1925; and his hefty Oeuvres Complètes, first published in 1961. As Delteil put it himself: ‘Non, non, non, le rôle de l’artiste n’est pas de vivre avec son temps, mais à printemps et à contretemps ’ (No, no, no, the role of the artist is not to live within his own time but in spring-time and against time).

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 21

English translation, History of the Consulate and the Empire of France Under Napoleon (1845–62). Interestingly, Carlyle’s famous History of the French Revolution appeared slightly earlier, in 1837. There are 12 editions of it in H. French Revolutions. This is fitting, since the Library’s foundation was directly linked to Carlyle’s problems in finding the books he needed to write the History. He disliked working in the British Museum, and did not get on with Anthony Panizzi, who became Keeper of Printed Books in 1837. Instead he fell back on his friend John Stuart Mill as his lending-library, borrowing from him over 150 books on the Revolution. But this could only be an ad hoc arrangement, so the year after the History appeared Carlyle set to work forming a committee and enlisting subscribers for a library open to all and from which, crucially, books could be borrowed. Three years later, The London Library opened. In this sense, it is one more legacy – and an extremely positive one – of the French Revolution.

Since the heroic age of Carlyle and Michelet, the Library has carefully kept up its holdings on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France. In the case of the French Revolution, the successive waves of historical interpretation – Marxist, revisionist, cultural and now global – have battered its shelves. For the Napoleonic Empire, the new trend of analysing its impact on all levels of society is well represented. As for the Emperor himself, all the 11 volumes that have so far appeared of the massive new edition of his correspondence, published by Fayard between 2004 and 2013, are ranged in battle order in H. Napoleon I. However, to appreciate the full impact of the Revolution and Napoleon’s empire, which were after all international phenomena, one has to travel beyond the French History stacks. Researching my last book on the fall of Napoleon took me into previously uncharted territory: H. Napoleonic Wars, H. German War of Liberation and, exotically, H. Joachim Murat, King of Naples.

The Library’s collections on twentiethcentury France and its great figures are also substantial. Here, though, there is one small anomaly. While Napoleon rates his own sub-section in the History stacks, Charles de Gaulle is relegated to Biography. Is this because de Gaulle, whatever the temptation, stopped short of founding a dynasty, and contented himself

with creating a monarchie républicaine? If so, in the interests of equality there might be a case for adding non-hereditary heads of state to the crowned heads peppering the History shelves.

I feel especially strongly about de Gaulle, since the Library has one particularly special book of his, located in the Safe. This is the first volume of the General’s Mémoires d’Espoir (1970), dealing with the crucial years between his return to power in 1958 and the end of the Algerian War. As the flyleaf makes clear, it was bought in Paris in October 1970 by Lord Gladwyn, British Ambassador to France from 1954 to 1960, and presented by him to the Library later that year.

Most interesting are Duff Cooper’s bookplate in the Library’s copy of Savary’s Memoirs (1835). the annotations to the text made by Lord Gladwyn while example of the gap between the General’s the book was still in his possession. It is self-image and the reality of the times. clear from these that although Gladwyn His copy of de Gaulle’s memoirs thus liked and respected de Gaulle, he felt that belongs in an especially rare category, some of the book’s passages were highly that of a secondary source which is also a tendentious. Next to the General’s claim manuscript one. that the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ tamely accepted the All of these treasures can be accessed Soviet dispensation in Central and Eastern in the traditional way, clumping up and Europe at Yalta is written: ‘Monstrous!’ down the corridors, staircases and catwalks Further on, de Gaulle’s praise of his prime of 14, St James’s Square. Now, of course, minister Maurice Couve de Murville rates thanks to the Library’s increasing online an incredulous exclamation mark, as does resources, its French History collections his statement that the Second World War extend into cyberspace. Through the damaged neither France’s reputation, nor e-library one can consult all the major her integrity.

French history journals, from Annales and One of Lord Gladwyn’s annotations the Revue Historique to the Revue d’Histoire is particularly significant. In Mémoires Moderne et Contemporaine, as well as the d’Espoir, de Gaulle presents himself as a American French Historical Studies. Added deus ex machina whose return to power to these, of course, are the major general in May 1958 to end the Algerian crisis and history journals such as the Historical rescue the French state was irresistible.

Journal, English Historical Studies and the In particular, he asserted that the French Journal of Modern History, in which articles people were already turning to him some on French history often appear. Accessing months before. Beside this claim Gladwyn them online at home does not give the comments cryptically: ‘What did he tell pleasure of browsing through the stacks, me in March?’ In fact, at a secret meeting but it is very convenient. If, miraculously, between the two men on 20 March 1958 at Carlyle were to reappear among us, I am Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, de Gaulle had sure he would sit in his study in Cheyne confessed in tears that France’s problems Walk, tracking down obscure articles on were so huge that he would be unable JSTOR as enthusiastically as any historian to resolve them even if he were recalled. of the computer age.

Gladwyn’s allusive remark is one more

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 23

FAiling Better Lexicographers have always faced challenges when compiling dictionaries, whether pinning down the etymology of a word or phrase or its earliest usage. Today their task appears almost insuperable, with the seemingly limitless digitised information available on the internet, but Jonathon Green argues that their endeavours are still worthwhile.

‘All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried.

Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. ’ Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho (1983) It used to be so much easier. Not, perhaps, back in the days of the 5 x 3 card, which as time passed and the numbers mounted became decreasingly manipulable, but in a less connected, less archived, less accessible era. BIE, as it were, Before the Internet Era. It – which has many meanings in my profession, the bulk of them being in one way or another obscene, or at least euphemistic – refers in this case to research, which is but a conduit, transmuting the gold of original creativity into what some might dismiss as the base metal of a dictionary’s illustrative citations. This is then refined even further into a simple definition. We search, we find, we pass on. Such is the job.

This research, in the case of my most recent, 3-volume dictionary, Green’s Dictionary of Slang (2010), with its 6,200 pages and 415,000 citations, was by no means restricted to The London Library, but undoubtedly took advantage of it.

To me, one of the glories of the open shelves has always been the serendipitous discoveries they encourage: research for a dictionary, however devoted, relentless and wide-ranging, has always been a matter of luck, of stumbling forward and, when lucky, tripping over the stone that reveals itself as precious – or at least, for the purposes of lexicography, an earlier example of what one has already unearthed. Thus, while I knew the work of R.S. Surtees, how else would I have encountered his near-contemporaries and fellow sporting novelists George 24 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

Whyte-Melville and Henry Hawley Smart, the spines of their books properly adorned with whips, snaffles and such arcana, but so dusty and abandoned that they required a special brush-down (pleasing, given the subject-matter) prior to being issued?

It is not to cast what slang terms ‘nasturtiums’ upon Great Clarendon Street to suggest that, for all its claims to authority as to the first appearance in English of this word or that phrase, even the mighty OED is fettered by the limitations of what it has found. The aim of the OED was to scour the widest extent of recorded literature, and reading lists were duly created from day one. They were doubtless followed faithfully, but lexicographers are human, both in their opinions and their stamina, and there were and perhaps are lacunae. Those who would seek out these lacunae might wish to consult Professor Charlotte Brewer’s website, Examining the OED (oed.hertford.ox.ac.uk/main). The Library possesses a copy of the late Jürgen Schafer’s explorations into predating the citations (examples of a given word’s usage) offered in the OED in his Early Modern English Lexicography (1989).

He found enough instances of earlier usages to create two volumes before his premature death. That was in 1985; had he had the opportunity to plunge into the internet, there would surely have been no limits to what he might have found.

Again I stress: this is not to sneer.

Forget the OED : let me restrict myself to my own efforts. Since the database for my dictionary was frozen for editing in the summer of 2009, I have revised, amended, expanded and above all improved some

25% of what I offered then. Size matters in lexicography, as does the way in which you use what you have. What we have is, of course, now beyond the fantasies of such as Frederick Furnivall, who helped create the OED’s original reading lists, or indeed myself, when I tiptoed into the slang arena around 1982.

Not so long ago I attended a couple of conferences, the subject of which was the future of dictionaries and their makers.

Setting aside what most lexicographers accept (voluntarily or otherwise) as obvious – the necessary retreat of the printed dictionary in the face of the infinitely greater potential of its digitised successors – all the papers, presentations and off-podium chat came down to a single trope: digitisation has given us superpowers; in dictionary terms we can do anything. The inevitable question is what, exactly, do we choose to do? Drop the stone in that pond and how does one ever set a limit to the ripples? The word is connectivity. Does anything not connect any more?

The original dictionary entry, for instance in Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall (1604), the first English dictionary, set out to explain ‘hard words’ or ‘inkhornisms’ , and offered A [a headword] + B [a given definition].

This still sets the pattern for mass-market lexicons. It may be that there follow B1, B2 and so on, signifying a variety of nuanced senses, but this core information – this is the word, this is what it means – is all that one receives. Time takes us further.

Samuel Johnson, among others, offered etymologies and illustrative citations (no need to ponder the method behind his etymology, nor the prejudices that

informed his examples): now the picture is A [headword] + B [etymology] + C [definition(s)] + D [citations]. Further refined, this resulted in the format of the original and current OED, and in its wake the pattern for my own printed work. This is lexicography on ‘historical principles’ , aiming to show the development of a language.

With such wide-ranging information available one should, surely, be able to exploit it, to demonstrate the connectivity that I noted above. But the printed page, which can only remain static and twodimensional, is unforgiving, and the larger the dictionary, the more impossible the task. I am prejudiced, and revel in a double-page spread of OED citations: 6 unbroken columns of 6-point text. But this is finally an aesthetic pleasure, and these columns defy useful inspection, or do so once one seeks to move beyond a single term. Interrogating a multi-volume print lexicon is daunting. It might be useful to access lists of synonyms, all 2,500 words, for instance, that slang offers for ‘drunk’ .

But unless the lexicographer chose to create and include such information, there is no fast and dependable way of finding out. I have added synonym lists to a single-volume dictionary, but their proper place is in a Thesaurus (literally a ‘treasure-house’), and even if that word was once synonymous with ‘dictionary’ , it is no longer so. Then there is the option to search by author: terms for ‘mad’ or ‘happy’ when found specifically in, say, Aphra Behn or William Shakespeare. Or even a simple calculus of the language to be found in a given author, for all writers have their own preferences. They are there, a flick through the dictionary’s text makes that clear, but even the 1928 OED required 10 volumes (the current revision has passed 50, but will probably never be offered in print), and who could (let alone would) page through those? The printed dictionary, parading itself as an authority, offers only what it predetermines. One can only ask questions if, knowing the word already, one knows at least a proportion of the answer. Such, some might suggest, is authority, the power of denial being as great as that of display.

Yet another victim of the internet is top-down authority, embodied in that all-encompassing vade-mecum that

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lexicologists call the UAD, the Universal Authorising Dictionary (the one we mean when, Scrabbling, we ask for justification: ‘is it in the Dictionary?’; this is the Dictionary as authority, not a specific work). I argue neither for nor against the dictionary as dictator. My age and education tend to demand of the dictionary something that, underpinned by scholarship, can be trusted, and I cannot love slang’s online Urban Dictionary (urbandictionary.com), with its definitions underpinned by no more than a count of thumbs – up or down, ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ . Surely if a dictionary cannot offer authority, what is its point?

Let me return to my ever-expanding ripples. Here is a word, an etymology, a definition, some citations. We have the internet, we no longer need bow to limits.

The potential for making connections is as terrifying as it is exciting. The etymology can suggest cognates, every other term that stems, like this one, from Latin or Romani. Let’s have them in. The definition can link instantly to synonyms. Them too.

The citations can be shown as a timeline.

But we are still holding back. Slang is particularly open to such expansion.

Many of my citations come from the lyrics of popular music. Why not link to them? Let’s hear the line in context. The lyrics have writers and performers; why not offer their photos, discographies and Wikipedia entries? All these links and more, at that well-known click of a mouse, can be laid open, over and over again.

What of serendipity? Luck? Stumbling hopefully? These remain, although in truth they need not. The internet, after all, is omnivorous and the researcher need only ask. Of course not everything, especially when it comes to slang-filled texts, has been scanned, although perhaps one day it may be. But the option is there. Just as the digitised dictionary can offer its readers a new level of access, zeroing in on desired information, so can the lexicographer now focus on a level of specific queries that was hitherto impossible. If the ‘first use’ remains the dictionary-maker’s grail, then how simple it is now to check one’s citations, via Google Book Search or one of the ever increasing roll-call of online archives (typically that of a nation’s entire newspaper output), and see if one

The lexicographer can now focus on a level of specific queries that was hitherto impossible

can find something older. This requires care: Google’s habit of dating all issues of a magazine to its first appearance, so that, for example, all Spectator quotes appear to originate in 1711, can lead one seriously astray.

And then there is another problem: time. The slang coiner may be forever 16; the slang lexicographer is not. Time is passing, time is running out, and the lexicographer’s share is running out with it. In 1996 I called my history of lexicography Chasing the Sun, echoing Johnson’s suggestion that the quest for ‘completion’ mimicked that of those who, believing that the sun is situated on top of a mountain, climb that peak only to find that it has moved to an adjacent height. Now we have a new form of mountains: the evolving pile of databases that, seemingly without limit, are added to what is digitally on offer. I shall never climb them all.

For researchers brandishing their lexical wish-lists, the internet has proved itself lexicography’s fairy godmother, granting much of what they ask. But wishes can be dangerous and there is doubtless a Chinese proverb warning us against them. As lexicographers we are doomed to failure. A dictionary is never ‘finished’ , merely published on some arbitrary date. The ever-changing language would not permit any alternative. But that is not to abandon the effort. The internet has set pouring a cornucopia richer than any that we have had available. It is magnificent, but it requires us to adapt and to make its gifts ours. We cannot allow this good thing to become too much. We have unprecedented tools. We must use them, if nothing else, to fail better.

’

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 25

MEMBERS’ News YOUR LIBRARY needs YOU The next few years will be an exciting but challenging time for the Library, and having the right trustees in charge will be crucial. We are starting our search for new trustees to join the board at the 2015 AGM. This is where you might come in.

Trusteeship offers an opportunity for members to engage with all the challenges affecting the Library, rather than pursuing single issues in isolation. Trustees commit to using their time, energy and expertise for the benefit of the organisation in a responsible and collaborative manner. They may also act as its advocates. All trustees elected to serve on the Library’s board are given a full induction to assist them in the role.

The Library’s trustees are drawn from its membership, and our members are diverse in their backgrounds, experience and personal qualities. It is not uncommon for trustees to contribute in ways that might not have been foreseen when they were selected. So rather than setting out detailed candidate specifications, we are framing this year’s recruitment process around the broad themes we see as particularly important:

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Our members rightly value the Library’s distinctive blend of tradition and modernity, but we need more members.

Could you help spread your passion for the Library?

All our trustees have a role to play here, but those who understand the media are particularly well qualified.

The Library’s building project has won awards and plaudits, but we still have plenty to do before it is completed. Our Building Project Steering Committee will need people with experience in the fields of architecture and construction to guide us through the final stage.

Before any building work can start, we need to raise the money to pay for it, and to support our activities more generally. The Library has been a cultural beacon for nearly 175 years and we want this to continue for many more, but we face keen competition for philanthropic funding so we welcome trustees who can help us gain access to it.

26 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

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Physical books are the Library’s heart and soul, but we cannot neglect developments in digital resources. We are not a major player in this world, so we need to work extra hard to get the best possible deals from digital publishers.

If you can help us achieve this, you could be a valuable addition to our board.

Sound financial stewardship has never been more important to the Library. If you have skills and experience in this area, we would be interested to hear from you.

The purpose of our Trustee recruitment process is to select the best candidates available to meet current needs, in a fair and objective manner. It is not meant to be burdensome but it does involve making an application, and shortlisted candidates will be asked to attend an interview. If you would like an informal discussion first, please contact Sarah Farthing (see below) who will put you in touch with Sara Wheeler, a current Trustee and Chair of our Nominations Committee.

A brief guide explaining the responsibilities and commitments involved, with full details of how to apply, is available to download from the Volunteering section of the Library’s website. Please contact Sarah Farthing on 020 7766 4712 or email librarian@londonlibrary.co.uk if you require any further information.

FOR CONSIDERATION THIS YEAR PLEASE SUBMIT APPLICATIONS NO LATER THAN 8 MAY 2015.

Blacks Club We regret that Blacks no longer offer London Library members free daytime access to the club. If you wish to visit Blacks, you can now only do so as a paid member of Blacks, or as a guest of a Blacks club member.

E-News updates We regularly update members by email about Library news, events and special offers. If you are not currently receiving these emails, it means we don’t have an up-to-date email address for you. If you would like to receive e-newsletters in future, please contact membership@londonlibrary.co.uk with your email address and membership number and we will update your contact details.

Book preservation work placements The Library’s Collection Care department has launched an exciting new work placement scheme in collaboration with Camberwell College of Arts, one of the country’s leading providers of professional conservation training.

For more than six years, the Library has supported learning at Camberwell by welcoming student groups for visits and hosting intensive internships in conservation skills. The new preservation work placement scheme will strengthen this relationship by inviting MA Conservation students to learn and work alongside our specialist studio team throughout the year.

In December we were delighted to welcome Gretchen Allen and Christina Romanowski as the first students to take part in the new programme.

Over the following three months they shadowed our Preservation and Binding Assistant for one day Gretchen Allen (left) and Christina Romanowski (right) at work in the Conservation Studio, measuring a week and learned to make customised archivaland fitting book boxes for vulnerable volumes in the Library’s collections. quality boxes for books with vulnerable bindings.

They picked up many more tips and techniques from our Conservator along the way, from carefully cleaning materials As the department prepares to receive its next cohort of interns using conservation-grade brushes to stabilising degrading leather we look forward to developing this mutually beneficial scheme bindings. further. It already bears the hallmarks of success, having provided We have greatly enjoyed Gretchen and Christina’s two aspiring professionals with essential skills and experience contributions to these core preservation activities and appreciated and helped safeguard more than 100 volumes for the future their palpable enthusiasm for our Library and its collections. enjoyment of our members.

Books most borrowed …

Each spring, the British Library, as administrators of the Public Lending Right, releases the list of the most borrowed titles from public libraries (plr.uk.com/mediaCentre). We thought it would be interesting to look at the most frequently borrowed books during 2014 here at The London Library.

Non-fiction 1. Hugh Trevor-Roper, One Hundred Letters from Hugh Trevor-Roper 2. Margaret MacMillan, The War that Ended Peace: How Europe Abandoned Peace for the First World War 3. John Carey, The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books 4. Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 5. John Campbell, Roy Jenkins: A Well-Rounded Life 6. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century 7. Max Hastings, Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 8. Margot Asquith, Margot Asquith’s Great War Diary, 1914–1916: The View from Downing Street 9. Anthony King, The Blunders of our Governments 10. Claudia Renton, Those Wild Wyndhams: Three Sisters at the Heart of Power

fiction 1.

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10.

Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch Robert Harris, An Officer and a Spy John Williams, Stoner Penelope Fitzgerald, The Beginning of Spring Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries Ian McEwan, The Children Act Allan Massie, A Question of Loyalties James Salter, All That Is Colm Tóibín, The Testament of Mary Penelope Fitzgerald, Innocence

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 27

p

sponsored by

LIFE IN LITERATURE AWARD The London Library’s ‘Life in Literature’ Award is given to an individual who has, in the opinion of the judges, had a sustained impact on the literary life of our nation. This year the judges chose a publisher, Stuart Proffitt. As Adam Freudenheim explained: ‘All the judges agreed that Stuart Proffitt is without a doubt the pre-eminent editor of non-fiction working in the UK today. Editors usually – and appropriately – remain behind the scenes, but few have been as important to the nation’s cultural life and dialogue over such a long period as Stuart.’

The Award, sponsored by Christie’s, was presented by Sir Tom Stoppard at a ceremony in the Reading Room last November. In his acceptance speech, Stuart made an eloquent plea for the maintenance of financial value in writers’ work.

The following extract gives a flavour.

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Tom was kind enough a moment ago to mention the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction, which a group of us founded 16 years ago. We used to have a phrase of Johnson’s printed on the front of the menus: “The Chief Glory of every People arises from its Authors.” Notice that Johnson did not say “The chief glory of every people arises from its publishers”. Indeed Patrick O’Brian, who was deeply read in Johnson, used to take particular pleasure in inserting rather derogatory remarks about publishers into the mouths of some of his characters in his typescripts, I think just to see if I would take them out.

As you probably all know, there are basically only two stories in the media about publishers. The first is “Book turned down by 16 idiotic publishers sells a million copies”, and the other is “Book for which idiotic publishers paid a million pounds sells 16 copies”.

So when I received Tom’s wonderful letter inviting me to accept the award, I wondered about the wisdom of allowing the spotlight of the Life in Literature prize to fall this year upon a publisher. This hesitation conceals a serious but rather obvious point. Publishers Tom Stoppard, left, and Stuart Proffitt, are completely unnecessary, right, at the Life in Literature Award, redundant, otiose, without the Reading Room, November 2014. authors. We can finance them, so far as book sales Judges of this allow, we can help them say year’s award what they want to say, we Adam Freudenheim (Chair) can try to push their work Artemis Cooper into the public eye, even Philip Hensher try to create the climate in Fiammetta Rocco which it can be appreciated.

Steven P. Murphy But even at their most (representing Christie’s) exalted, publishers are no Additional contributions from more than impresarios. The Hermione Lee central creative act, whether

28 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

writing fiction or non-fiction, plays or poetry, is not theirs. That belongs to the writers. And in this respect, I want to take note for a moment of one of the changes which is taking place in the writer’s ecosystem. A piece of research was published over the summer by the Society of Authors showing that the average income of professional writers in the UK – those who say that they earn their income from writing – has declined in real terms by nearly 30%. At the same time, the average price of books is falling quite sharply.

The heavy discounting of physical books, together with cheaply priced or heavily discounted e-books, is quite dramatically reducing the amount which reaches writers from readers.

Let me give you a specific example from what we might think of as the top end of the scale, from the world of old-fashioned printed books. In 1993, I was responsible for the publication of Margaret Thatcher’s memoirs, The Downing Street Years. The book sold 300,000 copies at the then considerable price of £25, and because this was two years before the abolition of the Net Book Agreement every single copy did sell for £25. In 2010, the Random House imprint Hutchinson published Tony Blair’s memoirs, A Journey, which remarkably sold almost exactly the same – 292,000 copies. (She would of course have been pleased that she was still 8,000 copies ahead.) The cover price was still nominally £25, but after discounting the actual average price for which the book was sold was £12.83.

If you work that back to 1993 prices, £12.83 is the equivalent of £8.30. So if you are in the market for prime-ministerial memoirs, you had to pay £25 in 1993 and almost exactly one-third of that in real terms for the next iteration 17 years later. Clearly, in purely financial terms, this is a good moment to be a buyer and reader of books, but a less good one to be a writer of them.

The book industry has so far managed something which the music business and the news business have managed much less well, which is to persuade the public that if you want to buy what they produce, you still have to pay for it. But the downward pressure is relentless.

Almost always when I meet someone not in the book business and they ask me what I do, the first question they ask in a rather doom-laden way is what the impact of e-books is on publishing.

E-books in my view are a tremendous development, allowing readers to find books in a new form and allowing new kinds of reading. But things have the value that we perceive them to have. If there is an existential threat which books face it is not a technological one, but that of a declining perception of value. So to my little list of what publishers do for writers, I should add that I think we have an absolutely critical duty to maintain the public idea that what writers are doing is important and valuable.

I have mentioned Patrick O’Brian. Whilst many of you have probably read his novels, you may not have read his biography of Sir Joseph Banks, who sailed with Captain Cook, became President of the Royal Society and was one of the great figures of the eighteenth century. At the beginning of that book he thanks the staffs of the British Library and The London Library, “those twin pillars of learning without which scholarship could hardly exist”.

Next year, I hope you will once again honour a writer. “The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.” Until then, my very, very grateful thanks.

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MEMBERS’ NEWS

Literary prizes Congratulations to the following members who have won or been nominated for literary awards and prizes.

Clive Aslet Winner of the 2014 Spear’s Book Award for LargeFormat Illustrated Book for An Exuberant Catalogue of Dreams: The Americans Who Revived the Country House in Britain.

Craig Brown Recipient of the 2014 Spear’s Book Awards’ Lifetime Achievement Award.

Anne de Courcy Shortlisted for the 2015 Paddy Power Political Book of the Year for Margot at War: Love and Betrayal in Downing Street, 1912–1916.

Sheila Hancock Shortlisted for the 2015 Paddy Power Political Fiction Book of the Year for Miss Carter’s War. David Harsent Winner of the 2014 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry for Fire Songs.

David Kynaston Winner of the 2015 Paddy Power Political History Book of the Year for Modernity Britain: Book Two: A Shake of the Dice 1959–62.

Andrew Marr Recipient of the 2015 Paddy Power Lifetime Achievement Award for Political Writing; shortlisted for the 2015 Paddy Power Political Fiction Book of the Year for Head of State.

James Naughtie Shortlisted for the 2015 Paddy Power Political Fiction Book of the Year for The Madness of July.

Rack Press/ Nicholas Murray Winner of the 2014 Michael Marks Publishers’ Award.

Andrew Roberts Shortlisted for the 2015 Paddy Power Political Book of the Year for Napoleon the Great.

Robert Sackville-West Shortlisted for the 2014 Spear’s Book Award for Family History for The Disinherited: A Story of Family, Love and Betrayal.

Desmond Shawe-Taylor Shortlisted for the 2014 Spear’s Book Award for Large-Format Illustrated Book for The First Georgians: Art & Monarchy 1714–1760.

Terry Stiastny Winner of the 2015 Paddy Power Political Fiction Book of the Year for Acts of Omission.

Frederick Taylor Shortlisted for the 2014 Spear’s Book Award for Financial History for The Downfall of Money: Germany’s Hyperinflation and the Destruction of the Middle Class.

Simon Thurley Winner of the 2014 Spear’s Book Award for Heritage Book of the Year for The Building of England.

Edmund de Waal and Emma Crichton-Miller Shortlisted for the 2014 Spear’s Book Award for Large-Format Illustrated Book for Edmund de Waal.

Jerry White Winner of the 2014 Spear’s Social History Book of the Year Award for Zeppelin Nights: London in the First World War. Elizabeth Wilson Longlisted for the 2014 William Hill Sports Book of the Year for Love Game: A History of Tennis.

Adam Zamoyski Shortlisted for the 2015 Paddy Power Political History Book of the Year for Phantom Terror: The Threat of Revolution and the Repression of Liberty 1789–1848.

If you have been shortlisted or received an award or prize, please do let us know. Email magazine@londonlibrary.co.uk.

Member Events The Art of Writing a Biography Anne de Courcy Tuesday, 21 April 2015 6pm – 8pm Members’ Room, 6th Floor Free

Anne de Courcy.

Historical biographies are as much about telling the story of its subject’s life as they are about depicting the social history of the period, and how these underlying, often unspoken, contemporary attitudes, standards and moral codes shape the subject’s life.

Anne de Courcy, Chairman of the Biographers’ Club, Costa Book Award judge and Library member, highlights the challenges of writing biographies and discusses her latest book, shortlisted for the 2015 Paddy Power Political Book of the Year, Margot at War: Love and Betrayal in Downing Street, 1912–1916.

Tickets are free but limited.

Reserve your ticket at londonlibrary.co.uk/ memberevents The London Library on Film Tuesday, 19 May 2015 6pm – 7pm Members’ Room, 6th Floor Free A rare opportunity to view The London Library, a short film from the BBC’s archive, which was shot at the Library

in 1972. Made for the Review programme and presented by John Wells, this wonderfully quirky film provides a nostalgic look back at the Library as it was in the 1970s, featuring among other notable members, Tom Stoppard and Eleanor Bron. Duration 18 minutes.

Members are welcome to bring wine/refreshments. Tickets are free but limited. To reserve a place visit londonlibrary.co.uk/ memberevents THE LONDON LIBRARY ANNUAL LECTURE AT THE HAY FESTIVAL T.S. Eliot, Poets and Libraries Sunday, 31 May 2015 For further details and tickets visit hayfestival.com This year’s London Library Annual Lecture will once again be hosted by the Hay Festival, on Sunday, 31 May 2015.

Marking the 50th anniversary of his death, T.S. Eliot, former President of The London Library, will be celebrated by Professor Robert Crawford, who will discuss Eliot’s relationship with The London Library, and the connections between poets and libraries in the wider context.

Professor Robert Crawford is a poet, former judge of the T.S. Eliot Prize and the author of a major new biography, Young Eliot: From St Louis to ‘The Waste Land’ (2015).

A DATE FOR YOUR DIARIES …

Members’ Summer Drinks Thursday, 2 July 2015 Reading Room 6.30pm – 8.30pm Meet and socialise with fellow members over a glass of wine in the Library’s Reading Room. Further details will be advertised nearer the time.

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 29

Hay Festival advert_London Library_Layout 1 05/02/2015 09:58 Page 1

What beneficiaries say* Academic excellence for business and the professions

The Royal Literary Fund  ‘A mi e quiet racle.

‘One of thr civility.’ ’ ou f o s r la il p , ble no ‘An increasingly and increasingly necessary, endeavour.’

-raft ‘A ray of light shinin ‘A lifeiters.’ g r th w rough a dark cloud. to ’ *quotes from RLF beneficiaries during 2013-14

The Royal Literary Fund has been supporting published writers during hard times for over 200 years.

If you need help e-mail eileen.gunn@rlf.org.uk or go to www.rlf.org.uk All enquiries are treated with sympathy and in the strictest confidence.

Registered Charity No 219952

Award-winning fiction.

Start here.

A writing short course at City University London can give ambition wings. Ask Fiona Rintoul, author of The Leipzig Affair and winner of the Sceptre Prize and the Virginia Prize for Fiction. Listen to her novel on BBC Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime this March.

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Short courses available in fiction and non-fiction writing for all levels, from beginner to advanced

30 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE CU_London Library Mag Ad_0115.indd 1

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EATING OUT 1 BENTLEY’S OYSTER BAR AND GRILL Since 1916, Bentley’s has been serving its fish and chips and feeding the hungry masses. For almost 100 years, the grande dame of Swallow Street has served fresh oysters, grilled fish, shellfish platters and steaks, sourced from around the British Isles. The restaurant is now under the watchful eye of Michelinstarred chef Richard Corrigan.

11–15 Swallow Street, W1B 4DG, 020 7734 4756. bentleys.org 2 BRASSERIE ZEDEL A large, bustling, grand and elegant Parisian brasserie with an authentic 1930s interior, Brasserie Zedel is perfectly located for The London Library, just off Piccadilly Circus.

Described by renowned French chef Pierre Koffman as ‘the only real brasserie in London’, it is open from 11.30am to midnight, 7 days a week, and serves great French food at remarkably low prices, with 2-course prix fixe menus starting at £8.75.

20 Sherwood Street W1F 7ED, 020 7734 4888. brasseriezedel.com

This is an advertisement feature.To advertise please call Irene Michaelides on 020 7300 5675.

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3 CUT AT 45 PARK LANE Created by chef founder Wolfgang Puck, CUT at 45 Park Lane is a modern American steak restaurant.

Enjoy prime beef, pan-roasted lobster, sautéed fresh fish and seasonal salads, accompanied by an exceptional wine list of over 600 wines, featuring one of the largest selections of American wines in the UK. Breakfasts are another highlight and on Sundays relax with brunch as you listen to live music.

45 Park Lane, W1K 1PN, 020 7493 4554. dorchestercollection.com

4 FRANCO’S Franco’s re-opened last month after a redecoration, with a stunning ‘new look’ and menu.

Serving breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, pre-theatre meals and dinner, the restaurant is also available for hosting private events in a glamorous new private dining room that accommodates between 16 and 55 guests.

61 Jermyn Street, SW1Y 6LX, 020 7499 2211. francoslondon.com

5 THE GRILL AT THE DORCHESTER An iconic Mayfair restaurant, The Grill at The Dorchester has been transformed for a new culinary chapter. In keeping with the original concept, Alain Ducasse’s protégé Christophe Marleix has created new seasonal menus. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, the restaurant’s dishes range from grill favourites to the restaurant’s signature blue lobster chowder. An extensive sweet soufflé menu is the first of its kind in London.

Park Lane, W1K 1QA 0208 7317 6531. dorchestercollection.com 6 WILTONS Established in 1742, Wiltons enjoys a reputation as the epitome of fine English dining in London. The atmosphere is perfectly matched with immaculately prepared fish, shellfish, game and meat. Choose from an exclusive wine list. Open for lunch and dinner, Mon–Fri, and dinner Saturday. To make a reservation, please quote The London Library Magazine.

55 Jermyn Street, SW1Y 6LX, 020 7629 9955. wiltons.co.uk

Have you ever had anything published?

If you’ve written a book or had an article published, the Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society (ALCS) could be holding money owed to you.

ALCS collects secondary royalties earned from a number of sources including the photocopying and scanning of books.

Unlock more information about how you could benefit by visiting www.alcs.co.uk

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 31

The Library of The LaTe hugh seLbourne, M.D. Wednesday 25 March 2015, Knightsbridge, London

enquiries +44 (0) 20 7393 3810 books@bonhams.com DarWin (CharLes) The Origin of Species, 1859 FIRST EDITION presented by Darwin’s mentor John Stevens Henslow, to his uncle the Rev. John Gunn £50,000 - 70,000

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