BOOKS AND THE BLITZ THE LONDON LIBRARY AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR Archive, Heritage & Development Librarian Helen O’Neill describes the personal risks taken by Library staff to protect the building and collection from the wartime attacks on the capital
The bomb that hit the Library in 1944 caused severe structural damage to the building and the loss of or damage to over 16,600 books.
On 7 September this year it will be 75 years since the first night of the Blitz in London. During the course of the Second World War Christopher Purnell, Librarian (1940–50), slept in the basement of the Library along with other library staff so that they could, as the Times reported, ‘protect the books by night, that they cherished by day’. In a recent discovery of letters written by Purnell to the Boston Athenaeum (for whom he selected English fiction titles), he describes the garish sight of fires across London 32 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
during the Blitz, visible from the roof of the Library. Unearthed by a keen member of the Library’s American Founders’ Circle, and kindly copied for us by the staff of the Boston Athenaeum, the letters provide an absorbing social history of life at the Library during the Blitz and give voice to the Librarian at the helm during the most perilous years of the Library’s history. The Library’s Committee Minutes in April 1939 record the purchase of tarpaulins, blankets, black paint and sand ‘in readiness in case of necessity’. By October 1939 skylights had been protected with sandbags and Purnell given permission to close early to ensure the Library was cleared by Blackout time. In July 1940 the Committee instructed that two members of the Library’s staff should sleep on the premises overnight to be on hand in case of emergency. In September 1940 Purnell wrote to the Boston Athenaeum: ‘I spend my nights here as well as days, sleeping in the basement. Guns crash out and bombs fall. One holds one’s breath when the whistling variety is coming, wondering where it will fall … The staff struggle home as best they can. I wonder how the girls can stand it after 6 or 7 hours in underground “Anderson” shelters in their gardens in the night, but they are very brave.’ In November 1940 Purnell described tackling five incendiary bombs on the Library roof and one inside the building which came in through a skylight, ‘but we got them out without damage being done with buckets of sand’. By March 1941 Purnell reported that while the Library had escaped further damage and the staff personal injury, ‘organising firefighting squads should find a place in future manuals of library management’. On 19 April 1941 the Library was again ‘in the thick of it but mercifully escaped structural damage’. Purnell reported that it would take a long time to ‘free the books from splinters of glass’. Five days later his letters record that the Library had lost another 100 panes of glass due to enemy action but considered itself lucky: ‘You will have seen from the papers,’ he wrote, ‘that Christie’s auction rooms were burnt out. They are close to the back of the Library. It was a trying night, but one is more than thankful that the Library escaped a direct hit.’ It was at this time that the Library reached its centenary. E.M. Forster, a member of the Library’s Committee during the war, marked the occasion with an article in the New Statesman and Nation which captured the essence of the Library within the context of the war: ‘In May 1841 The London Library was launched on the swelling tides of Victorian prosperity. It
