My Favourite library

There are many libraries which I use regularly in London; some to borrow books from, some as quiet places to work in, but the Westminster Central Reference Library is unique. In a small street just off Leicester Square, it is run by the London borough of Westminster. You don't need a ticket to get in, and it is available to foreign visitors just the same as to local resi­dents. You simply walk in, and there, on three floors, you can consult about 138, 000 reference books and they include some very remarkable and useful items. As you come in, the first alcove on the right contains tele­phone directories of almost every country in the world — Ar­gentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, and so on, besides direc­tories of important addresses in each country. There is also a street directory of every British town of any size, with the streets in alphabetical order, and the residents' names, as a rule, against their number in the street, while in another section the residents themselves are listed in alphabetical order.

Next there are technical dictionaries in all the principal languages. I counted 60 specialised technical dictionaries for Russian alone. Then there is a section which, besides the best world atlases, contains individual atlases of a great many countries, some of them almost too heavy to lift. Seven hundred periodicals, mostly technical, are taken by the library, and the latest issues are put out on racks nearby. By asking at the enquiry desk you can see maps of the whole of Britain on the scale of 1/60, 000 and 1/24, 000, and smaller-scale maps of nearly every other country in Europe. Around the walls, on this floor and the floor above, are reference books on every possible subject, including, for instance, standard works of English literature and criticism. Foreign literature, however, is represented mainly by antho­logies.

Finally, on the top floor of all, is a wonderful art library, where you can take down from the shelves all those expensive, heavy, illustrated editions that you could never really afford yourself. The librarian at the desk can direct you to answers for almost any query you may have about the plastic arts. There is in fact a busy enquiry desk on each floor, and the last time I was there they had just received a letter from a distinguished medical man. He had written to ask for information about sword-swallowing. He was very interested in the anatomy of sword-swallowers, and had failed to find anything either in medical libraries or in the British Museum Library! (Anglia, 1972)

10. Prepare to give a talk on an important library, its history and facilities.

11. Work in groups of three or four to discuss the pros and cons of reading detective novels and thrillers. Consider the following:

1. " It has been estimated that only 3 percent of the popula­tion in Britain read such classics as Charles Dickens or Jane Austen; Agatha Christie's novels have sold more than 300 mil­lion copies." (Longman Britain Explored) 2. " As thoughtful citizens we are hemmed in now by gigantic problems that appear as insoluble as they are menacing, so how pleasant it is to take an hour or two off to consider only the problem of the body that locked itself in its study and then used the telephone..." (J.B. Priestley) 3. 'There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." (W. Shakespeare) 4. " The world loves a spice of wickedness." (H. Longfellow) 5. " If Jonathan Wild the Great had been written today, I think he would have been the hero of it, not the villain, and we should have been expected to feel sorry for him. For compas­sion is the order of the day... Detective stories have helped to bring this about, and the convention that the murderer is always an unpleasant person, better out of the way." (L.P. Hartley) 6. " The crime novel is developing moral equivalency: un­pleasant detectives and charismatic criminals." (The Guardian, Oct. 8 1997) 7. " If the question " Wither Fiction? " is raised, the novelist will have to make up his mind which side he is on. Is he to write: " She was a beautiful woman, witty, clever, cultivated, sympathetic, charming, but, alas, she was a murderess? Or is he to write: " She was a beautiful woman, witty, clever, etc., and to crown it all, was a murderess"? (L.P. Hartley)