The London Library has just launched The Library Fund, an annual fundraising campaign focused on improving the Library in ways that directly impact its users. The funds raised this year will go towards the refurbishment of the historic toilets on the red staircase which form part of the building opened by president Leslie Stephen in 1898.
This year’s project has been chosen as both the men’s and women’s lavatories are in desperate need of a major overhaul. The 2019 Fund will enable a complete refurbishment of these facilities, while ensuring they remain in keeping with the style of the historic building. The refurbishment will include work to the floor, pipework, fixtures, lighting and more. Find out about the scope of the project here.
The budget for the project, and target for this year’s Library Fund is £75,000, with costs in large part dictated by the particular requirements of refurbishing a Grade II listed building. All funds raised will go towards this project, and should more than is needed be donated the excess will be applied to next year’s project.
Every year supporters donating to the Fund enable the Library to carry out work that can’t be funded through normal operating income and which help enhance the Library’s amazing building and its even more extraordinary collection.
Alternatively you can donate when you’re next in the Library, or by text message by texting LIBRARYFUND to 70085 to donate £10 (this costs £10 plus a standard rate text message).
Read more: London Library Launches Library Fund For Refurbishment Project
The London Library's Founders' Circle patrons visited Teatulia for an event this week. Teatulia is a tea shop and bar in Covent Garden owned by Library member Ahsan Akbar. Ahsan invited us, along with Sunday Times journalist Rosamund Urwin, to hear about his founding of the Dhaka Lit Fest as well as to taste some of his famous tea and tea cocktails.
Teatulia also features a "living bookshelf", a series of shelves which feature literary selections by some of the world's leading creative thinkers, perfect for browsing with your tea. The London Library has been chosen to curate a shelf and our books are now on display in the venue.
We asked the Library’s Founders’ Circle patrons to recommend their favourite books and we narrowed the list down. Our final 10 books were:
We That Are Young - Preti Taneja
How to Live - Sarah Bakewell
A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
Possession - AS Byatt
Travesties - Tom Stoppard
The Four Quartets - TS Eliot
Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Middlemarch - George Eliot
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Our bonus book is On Reading, Writing and Living With Books - a collection of essays by Library members published as part of the Found on the Shelves series.
We encourage Library members and non-members to stop by for a browse and a drink, Library members will also receive 20% off purchases upon showing their membership card.
Find out more about The London Library Founders’ Circle and the special events they enjoy or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for information.
The London Library welcomes participants onto its Emerging Writers Programme
At a reception held on Thursday 2 May in The London Library’s historic Reading Room, a range of well-known writers and figures from the literary world were on hand to welcome the 38 successful writers who have been selected to participate in the Library’s newly-launched Emerging Writers Programme for unpublished writers.
The group of Emerging Writers include performance poet Anna Kahn, Mónica Parle - former Executive Director of First Story and Swithun Cooper who works in the British Council’s Literature Library.
Of the 38 writers selected, 6 are poets, 5 write for screen or stage, 5 are planning non-fiction books and the rest are planning to write fiction. 13 of the writers are under 28.
Projects underway already are diverse and varied in genre, setting and topic from present-day Siberia to wartime Ukraine to Colonial India, Antarctic exploration to Mayan folklore, activism, taxidermy, the joys of clubbing, the care system and even an imaginary rodent underworld.
Chair of judges Daisy Goodwin comments: “I’m delighted to have been a judge for this scheme - the number of entries and the quality of work show there is a real need for places where emerging talents can find the space to produce their best work surrounded by like minded souls. The London Library won’t make you into a great writer but it certainly helps. I couldn’t imagine my writing life without it!”
Philip Marshall, Director of The London Library, comments: “We are thrilled to have had such an enthusiastic response to our inaugural Emerging Writers Programme and to be able to engage with such a talented and diverse group of participants in the early part of their writing careers. For nearly 180 years, the Library has been a great source of inspiration and support to writers of all different kinds and we look forward to seeing how this wonderful group of new writers will use the Programme to develop their respective projects.”
The candidates were chosen from a field of over 600 applicants by a panel of judges chaired by screenwriter Daisy Goodwin, novelist Nikita Lalwani, poet Raymond Antrobus, Director of AM Heath Bill Hamilton and Head of Prizes and Awards at the Society of Authors Paula Johnson.
The Library’s Emerging Writers Programme is geared towards supporting writers at the start of their careers and helping develop their work. Participants will benefit from one year’s free membership of The London Library (which normally costs £510 per annum) alongside a programme of writing development and networking opportunities, peer support and guidance in use of the Library’s resources.
During the year they will get free access to the Library’s unique collection which includes over one million books and over 2,500 periodicals titles that can all be borrowed. Membership also includes access to extensive online resources and dedicated writing and research spaces in the Library’s extraordinary building in central London.
The Emerging Writers Programme has been established with the help of Library supporters including AM Heath, The Garrick Charitable Trust and the Julio Nunez Memorial Trust.
View the full list of successful candidates
CONSERVATION OF CZECH SCROLL ENTERS NEW PHASE
On 9th April 2019, The London Library had the privilege of hosting a special reception to mark the latest chapter in the journey of a rare Czech Torah scroll, created in 1898 and a remarkable survivor from the darkest days of World War II.
The Library has been looking after the scroll for the past 40 years and is now handing it into the care of the Memorial Scrolls Trust who have been central to safeguarding over 1,500 Czech scrolls seized by the Nazis and eventually rescued by leading members of the UK Jewish community.
The scroll in the Library’s care is a sacred relic from the Jewish community of Domažlice in Czechoslovakia, which was eradicated by the Nazis. The Domažlice Synagogue was destroyed but many of its documents and ritual objects survived - as was the case with many other objects of worship from other desolated Jewish communities across Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia.
Somehow Jewish leaders in Prague managed to persuade the Nazis to gather these items together in the capital’s Central Jewish Museum (itself an extraordinary survival throughout the war). After the war they largely remained there as repression continued under the post-war communist regime.
In 1964 the London art dealer, Eric Estorick, with the financial support of Ralph Yablon, negotiated with the Czech Communist regime to purchase these 1,564 Torah Scrolls with the purpose of restoring them to Jewish communities abroad. The scrolls arrived in London and were taken in by the Westminster Synagogue; a Memorial Scrolls Committee (later Memorial Scrolls Trust) was formed to oversee their safekeeping and a number are now housed in their Czech Scrolls Museum in Knightsbridge; others have been returned to diaspora communities linked to their original Czech communities.
Sadly, no such community exists for the Domažlice scroll (Czech Torah Scroll no. 614), which was entrusted into the safe-keeping of The London Library in 1979, through the auspices of the London Library’s Treasurer Lewis Golden - a prominent member of the Westminster Synagogue.
In recent years, the Library has worked with the Memorial Scrolls Trust to enable this scroll to join the collection in their Knightsbridge Museum, where its own history can be properly linked with that of the many hundreds of scrolls that are catalogued, conserved and displayed there.
Philip Marshall, Director of The London Library commented: “We are very proud to have played a part in the safe-keeping of this rare scroll and delighted to be able to place it into the safe keeping of the Memorial Scrolls Trust who have done so much to make the history of these extraordinary relics a living one.”
Jeffrey Ohrenstein, Chairman of the Memorial Scrolls Trust added, “Torah which binds all Jews together, is also the Pentateuch revered by Christianity and Al Tarwat (the Five Books of Musa) revered by Islam. The Memorial Scrolls Trust hopes our scrolls are used to remind people of what they have in common, rather than of what divides them”.
