Goodbye to the British Museum's Round Reading Room?

A few days ago I got to see the terracotta warriors at the British Museum. Old cynic that I am, I was ready to be decidedly unimpressed – and to come away judging them not quite up to the classical stuff I was used to.

In fact I was gob-smacked. The show is brilliantly displayed – and you get a brilliant sense of closeness to the objects (until, that is, you cross the magic electronic line which sets the alarms off, embarrassingly).

I was also pleased to go to an exhibition about which I knew absolutely nothing. I know the BM prides itself on giving you the historical context for all its treasures. But I ignored all that. I have quite enough chance to be learnedly contextual when I’m looking at a classical show. Here it was wonderful fun just to gawp.

Though I’ve since then read this week’s TLS article on the “army” by John Keay, and I’ve wondered if I  shouldn’t perhaps have looked more carefully at the labels. I’d missed the obviously crucial fact (and an obviously crucial crossover with Greek sculpture) that all these figures were originally brightly painted.

But what struck me almost as much as the objects was the setting. The show is mounted upstairs on a temporary floor above (I suppose) the carefully preserved  desks and catalogues of the old Round Reading Room of the BM.

I’d been one of the very best lovers of that room – emotionally connected to it by the pages of thesis written there, by the assignations set up in its wonderful panopticon, and by the afternoons spent sleeping off good lunches bought me by older and richer readers when I was still in my 20s.

Maybe, I thought, seeing this show, the Reading Room could find a permanent new use.

When the library moved out of the BM to its new premises on the Euston Road (formally opened in 1998), I was one of those who felt most strongly that the marvellous Reading Room that had been a home from home to Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf and many others should stay – as it had been designed – as a library.

When Norman Foster transformed the Great Court, the Museum received a large donation from Paul Hamlyn to turn it into a visitor’s library (the first time in its history that the ‘great unwashed’ were to be let into this temple of learning). It was a noble thought, but it never really took off (among the unwashed or anyone else). I may have gone at the wrong times, but I have never seen the “Hamlyn Library” throbbing with readers like it used to do in the old days.

I still feel very attached to the old place. But seeing the success of the terracotta army show, unlike others, I did begin to think that maybe mankind would be better off with Karl Marx’s desk carefully photographed and removed – and some other splendid exhibitions moved in (without the bother of constructing a decking over all the library fitments).

There’s a touch of hypocrisy on my part here. I’m currently sporting a Victorian Society badge, which reads “Save the Ambridge Pews”… a reference to the plans of the modernising vicar in Britain’s favourite fictional village to remove the nice Victorian pews from his church to make way for a badminton court (vel sim).

The transformation of the Reading Room would be a bigger act of vandalism in many ways. But I now think, ten years on, that’s what I’d back.

Comments

[Jenny]

The exhibition is marvellous isn't it? A really exhilarating feeling of actually being face-to-face with someone thousands of years old - if only they could talk... (but then if only I could speak ancient Chinese). It struck me that it must be extra fun if you lived in China to go and see them, because they must all look eerily just like people you know! And the Ambridge pews are doomed, I fear.

[Tony Francis]

Dearest Foska, Thanks for your clarification. I am always learning something on this blog. Concerning talcum powder: I never liked it. When I was very small, either my mother, or two girl cousins would douse me down with it. I always managed to breath it in. Most recently, after my mother died, I found an unmarked canister in the bath. With some difficulty, I got the lid off, and spread the contents, which was talcum, all over the room. This latest episode has soured me on talcum, worse than before. But I thought it might be something you could use. Apparently not.

[SW Foska]

Tony, 'great unwashed' is different from 'unwashed' or even 'unwashed distinguished'. As for talcum powder, I find it adds not just a 'little panache' but also a little pancake, not the best thing to deposit between the leaves of the nation's books in the course of one's lucubrations.

[Tony Francis]

Foska: here is a cure for being in the state of an "unwashed distinguished scholar": take a bath or a shower. Bring soap with you. Then you will be a "washed distinguished scholar". People will be naturally attracted to you! Talcum powder adds a certain panache. It smells good and gives a whitish glistening appearance to the skin. Once again, something that will attract people to you.

[SW Foska]

As a great unwashed distinguished scholar, I'd like to note that under the old system it was still possible for anyone to gain access. You didn't have to have a higher degree, just a reasonable statement of purpose and evidence that you had attempted to source your material in existing public or university libraries. I wrote several references for undergraduates doing more specialized work which took them to the BL. They were all let in.
The new system has simply done away with the statement of purpose. It's not at all democratic as it's only wealthy undergraduates who can afford to be unpurposive; and if charges come in it will be more exclusive than ever.
No-one says that our national rail system is un-national because only special people are allowed to drive the trains, or that vivisection labs should be open to all to carve up mice randomly. What's the big deal about asking people what they're proposing to do?
But I think it's fine to have juggling and sculptures in the old BM.

[John Chapman]

A few observations.

Having once enquired after Karl Marx's actual seat in the Panizzi Reading Room I was informed that no-one can reserve a seat. Therefore X does not, necessarily marx the spot. Though if Bolshevists or Communists visited they were, diplomatically pointed to an arbitrary location.

Secondly, for all those who wept and caviled on the demise of the great dome, there were some amongst us who rejoiced. The room was cavernous, impersonal and echoed - appallingly. If someone, nay, everyone did, dropped one of those vast tomb-like catalogues the reverberations (along with coughs, sniffles and snores) bounced around the room like distant thunder.

Finally. The term 'British Library' fails to include the word 'National'. The present clientele may well number the great unwashed, the novel writers, and they, unwittingly, may exclude 'distinguished scholars' from resting their posteriors (and I have wandered around myself for a fair few minutes trying to spot a spare seat) but at least/last the BL (subtle difference from the BM) has at last realised that it is a Library for the nation.

[Craig Wherlock]

Talking about painted statues, I remember going to Vergina to see the royal tombs and reeling in shock when I saw the bright cartoon colours on display.

[Zacha]

I live in Australia, and whenever I visit the British Museum I use the old British Library reading room to look things up. Especially to flick through the Oxford Classical Dictionary.

The Hamlyn reading room that they having running in its place right now is cool - though not as beautiful (lovely as it is). But I have to use up the librarians' time just to get my hands on unexceptional reference volumes like the one above. I think the shelf-space is just as important as the desk-space.

In response to Sapphire, above: the great unwashed have the same right to take up a desk as the most distinguished scholar. Especially if they've already done their time queuing up for security like everyone else.

[anthony alcock]

I can't say that I ever used the Reading Room for research. That was all done in OPB in Store Street. But it turned out to be quite a handy place to leave my bags when I had to be in London for the day.
When it was finally moved to its current location, I was playing in a small group where I live (Kassel) and we used to do a couple of Gershwin songs, and I rewrote some of A Foggy Day "I viewed the morning with some consternation/The BM Reading Room is now in Pancras Station". The singer had written a certain amount of her Habilitation there, so it had a certain resonance.
Incidentally, we have a tram stop in Kassel (traditionally a socialist stronghold) that has been beautified by a small metal sculpture of Karl Marx's chair.

[F.Gamberini]

I think one should always be grateful for any indoor place where one can just walk in and read and write undisturbed. The main problem with the Round Reading Room (incidentally, I'd like to know whether there is anyone else who thinks the outside, squat and portly as it is, is irresistibly reminiscent of the mausoleum of Theoderic in Ravenna) is that the lighting is dismal; there are also few facilities for such a wide expanse; and the centre space should be cleared and perhaps enlivened with some museum exhibits. So I hope that whatever happens to the RRR, at least some of the books will continue to be available, if need be in an alternative space -which, I believe, is what is being planned.

Curiously, your blog post coincided with the news of the collapse of a 15m stretch of Aurelian Wall in Rome. Defensive walls are one aspect of antiquity I have always been fond of.

[Sapphire]

Oh don't do this to me! I wrote a poem about the demise of the old blue library. I was heartbroken. Those wonderful catalogues that one pulled out, made heavy by all the paste! I think it was probably flour and water paste. You can't get distracted in the same way by the electronic ones in the new BL. But then, now that the great unwashed have been invited into the new BL by the ignorant Tessa Jowell, you'd be lucky to *get* a seat. I have felt ashamed and embarrassed watching the most distinguished scholars queuing for a seat while every Tom Dick and Harry sits there banging out its novel.

[Arnold]

I visited the Reading Room last year for an event commemorating the 150th anniversary of its first opening (as the champagne corks popped we finally had a opportunity to test the famous echo) and was struck, like you, by the emptiness of the space - not necessarily a 'dead library' but certainly a building in search of a function. (It was also interesting to note the way that the false books concealing the doors in the gallery, which were never particularly noticeable when they were flanked by shelves of real books, now look obviously and obtrusively fake.) But on a purely practical note: the building is listed and so are the furnishings (hence the need to construct a decking over them for this exhibition) and there is no real possibility of stripping them out. Far better, surely, to construct an entirely new exhibition space to meet modern standards of conservation and access, rather than using the Reading Room for a purpose for which it was never designed.

[Candadai Tirumalai]

In 1973-74, my first year in England, I spent my days in the old Reading Room. In addition to long-term scholars, there were short-term researchers who were determined to find out all they could about some some esoteric or niche topic which had gripped them. Books stored in Woolwich took longer to arrive.
I remember chuckling to myself as I read a contemporary American novel in a room meant for rarer books just off the Reading Room, where for some reason such novels had to be read.

[Jackie]

I visited the exhibition a few weeks ago, and have to agree with you that it is superb. Not just the exhibits, but the organisation. The whole thing is a sell-out, but the timed tickets seem to be working. (Is this inviting fate?) I was nursing a broken left shoulder, and was very apprehensive, even though my husband promised to provide a phalanx of one on my left! But I needn't have worried. There was enough room for there to be no jostling, and I could get to every case to see the exhibits.
As for the use of the library, I have never had the opportunity to use it in that capacity. Whenever I have visited the BM it has seemed to be pretty well deserted. While it looks very nice from above when you get a window table at the restaurant, this does not seem to be a very good use of space. And the exhibition was wonderful...

[Kath]

I last looked into the old British Reading Room last year. It no longer seemed real - a "dead library", I decided, with some sorrow. I loved the big catalogues, with their pasted chronicles of books, where I made the kind of chance discoveries that are no longer possible in computerised catalogues. I enjoyed the intricate arrangements of blue cushioned shelves and even had a sentimental attachment to the queues and the trundling of trolleys. I always used the round reading room by preference, though I had friends who preferred the atmosphere of plainer reading rooms. I have to admit the new library is better for work. But I still regret my gentle strolls among the Song Dynasty bows and dishes which provided a calming break from frantic note-taking. The sculptures of the new library have many excellences, but they never wholly detach me from work.