MAGAZINE Summer 2012 / ISSUE 16
ÂŁ3.50
A Celestial Encounter
The transit of Venus and its pivotal scientific role in the age of Enlightenment, by Andrea Wulf
PICNICS
Benedict Flynn on the surprising history of a favourite British pastime
Literary Games
An Olympic sprint through the Library stacks with Richard Moore
001_Cover_5a.indd 1
30/5/12 10:08:29
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE / ISSUE 16
12
CONTENTS
Jerome K. Jerome’s comic account of three men and a dog’s trip in a rowing boat up the Thames never fails to remind Horatio Clare that our true worth can be found in our flaws and eccentricities
5 FROM THE LIBRARIAN 6 CONTRIBUTORS 11 BEHIND THE BOOK Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat (1889).
15 Transits of Venus occur in pairs, eight years apart, with more than a century lapsing before they are seen again. The transit this month has prompted Andrea Wulf to examine the critical role that this rare celestial event played in astronomical discovery during the age of Enlightenment.
12 BIBLIOTHERAPY Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat is one of literature’s guaranteed tonics, according to Horatio Clare
15 A CELESTIAL ENCOUNTER
Edmond Halley, line engraving after R. Phillips, date unknown. Reproduced with the permission of the Wellcome Library, London.
18
Andrea Wulf describes the excitement generated by the transits of Venus in the 1760s, when scientists hoped the planet’s movements would help them to measure the dimensions of the solar system
18 A MOVEABLE FEAST Picnics have a fascinating history, which Benedict Flynn has unearthed through reading Persian poetry, tales of slaughtering Mughal armies, and accounts of Louis XV’s illicit al fresco dining
We think of the picnic as a somewhat eccentric British habit, but Benedict Flynn describes a richer and more varied history, from its origins in eleventh-century Persia
21 THE LONDON LIBRARY STUDENT PRIZE 2012 Lovers’ Picnic (detail), c.1526–7. Harvard Art Museums/ Arthur M. Sackler Museum.
24 On the eve of the XXX Olympiad in Britain, it seems fitting for Richard Moore to delve into the stacks in search of the Library’s Olympics-related titles, where he finds that books on previous Games reveal recurring themes about the way the host nations choose to stage the event
Simon Winchester explored numerous shelfmarks in the Library’s stacks, from S. Slavery to S. Ships, to research his book on the Atlantic Ocean
Introducing a new Library initiative, its inaugural recipients, and a fine winning essay
24 HIDDEN CORNERS Richard Moore on the Library’s collection of titles on the Olympic Games past and present
27 POETRY The winner of this year’s Cosmo Davenport-Hines Prize 29 MEMBERS’ NEWS The Olympic torch being carried through Bari in Italy, on its way to the London Olympics, 1948. Photo by Keystone/ Getty Images.
35 EATING OUT
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 3
003_Contents_5a.indd 3
30/5/12 10:09:41
p
from the L IB RARIA N The sun has been exceptionally reluctant to appear in recent months, but as this issue of the Magazine went to press we were finally experiencing some seasonal warmth and light. Summer, it seems, is here at last. While many of us turn our minds to the prospect of garden parties or beaches at this time of year, Andrea Wulf has been thinking about the sun rather more seriously in her fascinating piece on the transit of Venus. With the most recent transit having occurred earlier this month – and with more than a century to wait until the next one – her account of the transits of 1761 and 1769 describes a scientific community drawn together, heedless of geography and politics, to make no less momentous a calculation than the size of the solar system. The ambition of that collective endeavour still has the capacity to inspire. Whether or not you find sport a source of inspiration, the London Olympics are almost upon us, and Richard Moore has been scouring the stacks for material related to the Olympic tradition; much of which, as he points out, has surprisingly little to do with sport. His entertaining and thought-provoking Hidden Corners also serves as a reminder that the Library’s usual opening hours will be altered over the hectic period of the London Games: see page 32 of Members’ News for details.
On the cover
Venus crossing the path of the sun, 2004. Photograph by Mike Lukason.
An unusual feature in the Magazine this time is our coverage of The London Library Student Prize, a new initiative suggested and supported by a generous Library member and galvanised through valued partnerships with The Times and FreshMinds. This opportunity to reach an audience of potential young members, and to recognise fledgling writers and thinkers, is a vital one for the Library, and we are deeply grateful to those who have helped us bring the inaugural Prize to fruition. Enjoy reading the winning essay, and learning about the four talented young people who are our 2012 winner and runners-up, on pages 21–3. And if all this fine reading leaves you wanting sustenance, may I recommend you secure yourself a comfortable patch of grass, spread out a blanket and enjoy Benedict Flynn’s excellent piece on that favourite British pastime, the picnic. May the sun keep shining as you savour it and your other summer reading.
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 29 June 2012 © 2012 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 Lottie Cole Aimée Heuzenroeder Peter Parker Erica Wagner
Advertising Jane Grylls 020 7300 5661 Kim Jenner 020 7300 5658 Hannah Jackson 020 7300 5675 Development Office, The London Library Lottie Cole 020 7766 4716 Aimée Heuzenroeder 020 7766 4734
Magazine feedback and editorial enquiries should be addressed to development@londonlibrary.co.uk
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 5
005_Editorial_5a.indd 5
30/5/12 10:11:17
CONTRIBUTORS
Horatio Clare
joined the library in 2004
Horatio Clare is an award-winning writer and journalist, author of the memoirs Running For the Hills (2006) and Truant (2007), and a travel book, A Single Swallow (2009). He recently published The Prince’s Pen (2011), a novella based on a tale from the Mabinogion. Horatio currently divides his time between teaching, travelling on cargo vessels and writing Trading Seas, a book about ships, oceans and men.
Benedict Flynn
joined the library in 1993
Benedict Flynn read History at Trinity College, Dublin. Since then he has translated the Divine Comedy (1999), Beowulf (2006) and Gawain and the Green Knight (2008). More popular among children is his audio-book retelling of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (1997). He is currently working on Weather Permitting, a history of the picnic.
Seth McCurry
Seth McCurry is a Master’s student in the Geography Department at King’s College London, currently pursuing a degree in Environment and Development. He was born and raised in Pasadena, California, and completed his undergraduate degree at Georgetown University and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
Richard Moore
joined the library in 2010
Richard Moore is a journalist and author. His first book, In Search of Robert Millar (2007), won Best Biography at the British Sports Book Awards. His second book, Heroes, Villains and Velodromes (2008), was long-listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year. He is also a former racing cyclist who represented Scotland at the 1998 Commonwealth Games and Great Britain at the 1998 Tour of Langkawi. His book The Dirtiest Race in History is published this month.
Simon Winchester joined the library in 1986
Simon Winchester’s books include The Surgeon of Crowthorne (1998), Bomb, Book and Compass (2008), The Map that Changed the World (2001) and A Crack in the Edge of the World (2005). He is currently working on a new book about America, The Men Who United the States, to be published in 2013 along with a young adults’ book on natural disasters. Simon was awarded an OBE in 2006.
Andrea Wulf
joined the library in 2002
Andrea Wulf trained as a design historian at the Royal College of Art and is the author of The Brother Gardeners (2008; longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2008; winner of the American Horticultural Society 2010 Book Award) and the New York Times bestselling The Founding Gardeners (2011). She has written for the New York Times, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal and many others. Her book Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens was published last month.
victorious eau de parfum
established 1730 89 Jermyn Street, London SW1Y 6JH w w w.florislondon.com
6 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
006_Contributors_5a.indd 6
30/5/12 10:16:22
Behind the
Book
Simon Winchester’s trawl through the Library stacks for material for his book, Atlantic: A Vast Ocean of a Million Stories (2010), netted a wide variety of titles on the subject
‘
Simon Winchester’s Atlantic: A Vast Ocean of a Million Stories (2010), 2011 edition.
From the time of my first transatlantic voyage in 1963, aboard the liner Empress of Britain, I have been captivated by the immense ocean that borders and to a great extent defines the British Isles. To write this account I travelled to all of its edges, to most of its islands, to all of its great ports, and reckon now to have crossed it some 500 times. When embarking on a new book of non-fiction, I invariably start at the London Library, even though I now live in New York. The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760–1810 by Roger Anstey (London 1975). S. Slavery. A section of my book is devoted to bad behaviour on the ocean, principally warfare, piracy and slavery, and since Britain played so key a role in ending the latter practice, so this book pointed the way to more detailed research on the subject. Anstey, who died in 1979, was perhaps the most eloquent student of the abolitionist cause, and the world’s principal authority on the highly profitable trade in human beings that for so long dominated the notorious ‘Middle Passage’ across the ocean. North Atlantic Seaway: An Illustrated History of the Passenger Services Linking the Old World with the New by N.R.P. Bonsor (Prescot, Lancs. 1955). S. Ships. This volume and that by John Brinnin, below, captured for me something of the romance of the ocean liner trade. Bonsor had a lifelong fascination both for small railways (as on the island of Jersey) and very large passenger ships. He devoted five unillustrated volumes to listing the names of every liner that ever crossed the pond; this one, happily, has pictures. The Sway of the Grand Saloon: A Social History of the North Atlantic by John Malcolm Brinnin (London 1972). S. Ships. Brinnin was a poet and scholar, an authority on T.S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas, an aesthete and a man of great style: he loved the beauty of ocean travel, and recorded this love in a
classic and passionate book. Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and its Peoples, 8000 BC–AD 1500 by Barry W. Cunliffe (Oxford 2001). H. Europe (& Gen.). Who saw the ocean first, who settled beside it, who first tried to sail into it? Cunliffe is the most readable and authoritative of the scholars of Europe’s Atlantic human story, and his was one of the first books I snapped up. Phantom Islands of the Atlantic: The Legends of Seven Lands that Never Were by Donald S. Johnson (London 1997). S. Maps. There is, as one might suspect with so vast an ocean as the Atlantic, a good deal of weirdness (it was long thought, for instance, that some things would sink deeper into the ocean than others – fat people would underlie thin, horses would sink below frogs, and so on). The strange stories of the ocean’s mythical islands, from Atlantis to Hy-Brasil (which was said to lie off Connemara, not Rio), are here related in absorbing detail. The Physical Geography of the Sea by Matthew F. Maury (London 1883). S. Sea. Although we Britons might suppose ourselves the founders of oceanography, we cannot in fact claim the honour: the American Matthew Maury, disabled in a Virginia stagecoach accident and thus compelled to sail a desk for the remainder of his naval career, was the greatest master of mapping and oceanic discovery. His classic book is required reading by anyone with a maritime fascination.
The Atlantic: A History of an Ocean by Leonard Outhwaite (New York 1957). T. Voyages. This was the last major book to be written about the world’s most important ocean, ‘the inland sea of the modern world’ , as I have ventured to describe it. It is a fine book, though needing to be brought up to date – not least because we now know what Outhwaite did not: just when and how the Atlantic was formed, and how it will probably cease to be. The Atlantic Frontier of the Thirteen American Colonies and States by Jacob M. Price (Aldershot 1996). S. Trade. The military dominance over what is now essentially America’s ocean stems from the vast fleets that operate out of Norfolk, Virginia, the world’s biggest naval base. This book explains the early interest that American east-coasters had in the sea across which they or their forebears had travelled when they came to found their new nation. A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492–1640 by Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert (Oxford 2007). H. Colonies, Portuguese. Portugal: ‘so small a land to live in, but the whole world to die in, ’ as it used to be said. The Atlantic plays a crucial role in Portugal’s story – from Henry the Navigator and Vasco da Gama to the creation of Brazil – and this book offers the outlines of a remarkable story.
’
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 11
011_Behind_the_Book_5a.indd 11
30/5/12 10:20:29
BIBLIOTHERAPY
When Horatio Clare loses faith in humanity, Jerome K. Jerome’s novel, with its affectionate and comic depiction of a group of eccentric and flawed characters, provides the remedy
Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome Death and taxes may have been good bets when Benjamin Franklin aphorised them as the only certainties in life, but now soap shops offer Immortality Balm for thirty quid and the international rich are beyond the reach of the revenue. How many certainties remain? Here’s one: Jerome K. Jerome’s novel Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog), first published in 1889, will always make me laugh and remind me that humans are essentially beautiful and good. So many copies of Three Men were sold in the years after its first publication that the publisher told the author that the readers must be eating them. Its comic account of the narrator, who is a writer based on the author (J.), George (a banker), the dog Montmorency and Harris (a gentlemantough), undertaking a return trip up the Thames from Kingston to Oxford in a rowing boat (and abandoning the enterprise at Pangbourne) has never disappointed a single reader worthy of the name, rendering it unique in literature. The book is not entirely funny, though one forgets that between re-readings. Whenever J. mentions his Uncle Podger you wish he wouldn’t. Chapter 3 begins with a deadly anecdote about hanging a picture that goes on for pages. One also forgets its shadows. Three Men contains depression, humiliation, a suicide, violence, snobbery, social injustice, alcoholism, frustration and friends falling out. It ends in a limp retreat to ‘a capital little out-of-the way restaurant’ in London. Jerome K. Jerome cannot be accused of averting his gaze from the actual stuff of life. The book is an idiosyncratic English history, a patchy memoir, a cod travel guide, an incidental portrait of its age and a spiritual manifesto in favour of smoking over work, stitched together with set pieces. My
favourite is Harris and the swans. George and J. have been out for a drink, leaving Harris and Montmorency in charge of the boat (and the whisky). The shore party return to find Harris in a confused state. They ask him what has been happening. J. recounts his answer: ‘“Swans!” It seemed we had moored close to a swan’s nest, and soon after George and I had gone, the female swan came back, and kicked up a row about it. Harris had chivvied her off, and she had gone away, and fetched up her old man. Harris said he had had quite a fight with these two swans; but courage and skill had prevailed in the end, and he had defeated them. Half an hour afterwards they returned with eighteen other swans! It must have been a fearful battle, so far as we could understand Harris’s account of it. The swans had tried to drag him and Montmorency out of the boat and drown them; and he had defended himself like a hero for four hours, and had killed the lot, and they had all paddled away to die. “How many swans did you say there were?” asked George. “Thirty-two,” replied Harris, sleepily. “You said eighteen just now,” said George. “No, I didn’t,” grunted Harris; “I said twelve. Think I can’t count?” ’ Human beauty and goodness may not be obvious in this passage, except that whenever I read it tears come and I feel a great love of the author, and George and Harris, and the swans, and of course Montmorency. My brother, for whom dogs have a strange and universal affection, claims that canines are proof that God
Illustration by A. Frederics from Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat (1889).
is good. Our affection for dogs does not necessarily make us lovable – whenever I meet an Alsatian I think of Hitler and avoid its eye – but it is a point in our favour. Here Montmorency helps with the packing: ‘He pretended that the lemons were rats, and got into the hamper and killed three of them before Harris could land him with the frying-pan. Harris said I encouraged him. I didn’t encourage him. A dog like that don’t want any encouragement. It’s the natural, original sin that is born in him that makes him do things like that.’ Perhaps the secret of Three Men is Jerome’s conviction that it is not necessarily our talents and triumphs that are the best of us, or the truth of us. It is in our natural, original sins, in our flaws, weaknesses and eccentricities that we are particular and amusing to behold. Dogs are beautiful and good, and they seem to think we are worth defending; most of them, anyway. Perhaps this is hope for us yet.
12 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
012_Bibliotherapy_5a.indd 12
30/5/12 10:21:38
A Celestial Encounter In the wake of the transit of Venus this month, Andrea Wulf looks back to the transits 250 years ago, when astronomers around the globe embarked on the first worldwide scientific project On 5 June, I joined astronomers at the Kitt Peak National Observatory on a mountain top above the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, to view a rare astronomical event, which started just after 3pm and ended with sunset just before 7.30pm: the transit of Venus. We knew that this would be our last chance to see how the brightest star of the night would, for a few hours, appear as a perfectly black circle crossing the burning face of the sun. The next time it occurs will be in December 2117. Transits of Venus always arrive in pairs, eight years apart, but there is an interval of more than a century before they are then seen again (the last transit was in June 2004). I had chosen Arizona because weather statistics predicted a 93% chance of sunshine here for June and, having written a book about the eighteenth-century astronomers who raced across the world to see the same spectacle, I did not want to take any risks. As I looked through the telescope to see Venus push on to the sun, I thought of the hundreds of astronomers who pointed their telescopes towards the sky on 6 June 1761 and 3 June 1769; unlike me, though, many of them had risked their lives to catch a glimpse of the planet. In 1716 the British astronomer Edmond Halley published a ten-page essay that called on scientists to unite in a project spanning the entire globe – one that would change the world of science forever. Halley predicted that, on 6 June 1761, Venus would traverse the face of the sun. He believed that measuring the exact time and duration of this rare celestial encounter would provide the data that astronomers needed in order to calculate the distance between the earth and the sun.
Halley was 60 years old when he wrote the essay and knew that he would not live to see the transit (unless he reached the age of 104), but he wanted to ensure that the next generation would be fully prepared. Writing in the journal of the Royal Society, the most important scientific institution in Britain, Halley explained why the event was so important, what these ‘young Astronomers’ had to do, and where they should view it. It was essential, Halley pointed out, that several people at different locations across the globe should measure the rare heavenly rendezvous at the same time. It was not enough to see Venus’s march from Europe alone; astronomers would have to travel to remote locations. If they viewed the transit from places as far apart as possible, they would be able to observe Venus traversing the sun along a slightly different track, depending on their particular location in the northern and southern hemispheres. Venus’s path across the sun would be shorter – or longer – according to where the viewing station was based. With the help of relatively simple trigonometry, these different tracks, and the differences in the entry and exit times of Venus over the disc of the sun, could then be used to calculate the distance between the sun and us – but only if the astronomers combined their results. At the time Halley published his article, the universe was regarded as running like a divinely created clockwork according to laws that humankind had only to comprehend and compute; the planets’ movements along their elliptical orbits as well as their fixed relation to each other was considered part of that understanding.
The key to this order was the distance between the planets, which was measured in a unit that was based on the distance between earth and sun (the so-called AU, or Astronomical Unit), the only problem being that no one had managed thus far to calculate this distance exactly. Put simply, eighteenth-century astronomers had a map of the universe, but as long as they did not know how far the earth really was from the sun such a map was useless, for they had no idea of its real scale. The transit of Venus, so Halley believed, was the key to unlocking this secret. Halley’s request would be answered when hundreds of astronomers joined in the project as the date of the transit grew near. They came together in the spirit of the Enlightenment. The race to observe and measure the transit of Venus was a pivotal moment in a new era, one in which man tried to understand nature through the application of reason. In 1760 and over the following decade, astronomers and scientific societies from across the world united to work on the first ever global scientific project. In the midst of the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) that tore Europe and its colonial possessions apart, the scientists ignored political, national and religious borders to attempt to address the most important astronomical question of the age. British instrumentmakers worked tirelessly to dispatch the necessary instruments to astronomers and learned academies across Europe. Excited astronomers received passports from nations that were at war with each other, granting them free passage through warring armies. ‘The sciences, ’ as Joseph Banks, Captain James Cook’s naturalist THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 15
015-017_Transit of Venus_5a.indd 15
p 30/5/12 10:58:17
Previous page Kitt Peak National Observatory, Arizona. © Shackleford Photo Art. Left Engraving of a reflecting telescope, and projection of the transit of Venus, c.1760s. Reproduced with the permission of the Wellcome Library, London. Opposite, from top Venus crossing the sun. Photograph taken in North Carolina, 8 June 2004. © David Cortner; diagram showing Venus’s tracks as seen by observers from the northern and southern hemispheres in 1761.
and a future President of the British Royal Society, later said, ‘are never at war’ . The transits of Venus in 1761 and 1769 therefore became the embodiment of the importance of knowledge and the spirit of the Enlightenment itself. No matter how much national prestige the individual results would bring, scientists realised that no one country could generate this amount of data alone, and that a project of this scale would only be possible as an international collaboration. Of course different nations would dispatch their own expeditions, but the results would be collected, shared and published in the journals of the scientific societies across Europe and America. This was therefore to be the most ambitious scientific project that had ever been planned – an extraordinary and audacious undertaking at a time when clocks were still not accurate enough to measure longitude precisely, and when a letter posted in Philadelphia took two to three months to reach London. During the transit decade the French sent out expeditions to Pondicherry in India, to Siberia and to the island of Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean, as well as to Baja California in northern Mexico, while the Swedes organised several observations in Lapland, in the far north of the country. Catherine the Great dispatched eight expeditions across her vast empire, extending as far east as Yakutsk, and the King of Denmark ordered a transit viewing at Vardø, an island in the far north-eastern corner of Norway. In Britain the Royal Society took a leading role and dispatched astronomers to Bengkulu on the island of Sumatra and St Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean, as well as to Hudson Bay in northwest Canada, the North Cape in Norway
and with Captain Cook on HMS Endeavour to Tahiti. The Royal Society established a Transit Committee to oversee the operation. Instruments were ordered, destinations established, candidates interviewed and travel arrangements organised. Most importantly, the fellows of the Royal Society succeeded in convincing the Crown to sponsor these expeditions. For the second transit in 1769, for example, George III, the first British monarch to have studied science as part of his formal education, granted them the generous sum of £4,000, as well as buying HMS Endeavour for Cook’s journey. Never before had the state funded a science project on such a scale. But the transits of 1761 and 1769 were not only of interest to astronomers; they also captured the public imagination. While the globetrotting observers encountered armies, hurricanes and deadly diseases, closer to home, amateurs and other spectators also prepared for the rare event. George III commissioned an observatory to be built in the grounds of the old deer park in Richmond and Kew, while several aristocrats invited astronomers to observe the transits from their estates across Britain. Newspapers picked up on the transit story too. In April 1761, the Edinburgh Magazine explained the scientific details of the transit at great length, while in the American colonies the Boston EveningPost reported that the King had provided money for the expeditions. Books were published for amateur observers, including a whimsical ‘dialogue’ between a brother and a sister that explained the transit to young gentlemen and ladies. Benjamin Martin, an English instrument-maker, took advantage of the growing popular interest
in astronomy, offering daily talks on the transit in the weeks before the event, at his shop in London’s Fleet Street; for the entrance fee of 2s. 6d. audiences could learn about Venus with the help of Martin’s array of orreries, globes, diagrams and maps. On the day of the transit in London, Martin’s shop was packed, despite the early hour (the celestial encounter was already visible at sunrise just before 5am). In the event of clouds obscuring the real spectacle, Martin had prepared alternative entertainment for his audience, with an ‘Artificial Transit’ – a 7 ft 6 in by 5 ft backdrop depicting the sky over London, with a clock-type mechanism that moved a model of Venus across a painted sun (probably a good idea, as several London observers complained after the transit about the ‘volumes of smoke’ coming from the many chimneys). As it was, Londoners initially despaired when the sun rose behind clouds, but were then treated to a sight of Venus later on when the sky cleared at around 7am. Wherever astronomers set up their telescopes, crowds wearing smoked glasses assembled to see Venus as a tiny black dot crossing the sun. Although astronomers remained glued to their telescopes even when clouds and rain prevented them from seeing anything, their audiences quickly ran out of patience. Some looked for better forms of entertainment. When a thunderstorm obscured the sky in Leiden, in the Netherlands, one spectator resolved to see an ‘earthly Venus’ in the opera house instead. The observations there, he wrote to a friend, turned out to be successful and the singer ‘looked like she would have allowed some immersion’ . A newspaper report described how earthly pleasures were also enjoyed by some ‘young Bloods’ in London who, after they had seen the black dot on the sun, ‘made a Transit into Covent Garden among a number of the said beautiful Planets’ , an area well known at the time for its prostitutes. In the months after the two transits, the information that the astronomers had collected slowly made its way back from Constantinople, Peking and Madras to London; from Berlin, Uppsala and Mexico City to Stockholm; and from St Petersburg, Tobolsk and Lisbon to Paris. The American Philosophical Society distributed the results to the scientific societies in Europe
16 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
015-017_Transit of Venus_5a.indd 16
30/5/12 10:24:05
A CELESTIAL ENCOUNTER
Sun
Earth N
S
Venus
Track seen from S Track seen from N
and in return received observations from France, Britain and Sweden. The material was then collected in the scientific societies in Stockholm, St Petersburg, London and Paris, where the astronomers began to evaluate the data. Once the results were compared, it became apparent that all the observers had encountered one particular problem. They all noted that Venus did not move swiftly over the face of the sun, but instead lingered at the sun’s edge for up to one minute in time, seemingly glued and unwilling to start out on her path. This was the socalled ‘black drop effect’ , which made it impossible for observers to determine the exact beginning and end of the transit (a phenomenon that has only recently been explained as an optical effect caused by atmospheric conditions on earth and telescopic diffraction). These entry and exit times were essential for the calculation and, for an astronomer whose profession was built on precision, this spelt disaster; even scientists who had watched side by side had recorded different times on their tables. Consequently, the results of the calculations of the distance between earth and sun varied widely, with a difference in range of 20,000,000 miles in 1761. The astronomers succeeded in narrowing this down to a 4,000,000-mile range after the 1769 transit, which determined the distance between 92,900,000 to 96,900,000 miles, very close to today’s value of 92,960,000 miles. The learned societies ‘may congratulate themselves’ , the British said, on succeeding in measuring the size of the solar system – or at least ‘as accurate a determination’ , they conceded, ‘as perhaps the nature of the subject will admit’ . Most significantly of all, however, an international community of scientists and thinkers had for the first time banded together on a global project despite wars, potential conflicts of national interests and adverse physical conditions. The transit projects revealed the importance of international communication and collaboration. The intensity of their commitment was unparalleled, and the international ties it fostered remained in place long after the transits. No matter how long it took an individual to travel from London to St Petersburg, from Paris to Philadelphia, or from Pondicherry to Rotterdam, the scientific world had become the global village it is today.
.
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 17
015-017_Transit of Venus_5a.indd 17
30/5/12 10:24:39
The lawn of St James’s Square at lunch time offers about as much personal space during the summer as a gannet colony in the breeding season. But ask anyone searching for a patch of grass to sit on with their soup and sushi and they will tell you, lunch al fresco elbow-room only is still better than al desko. If the ground is damp underbottom, the soup and sushi the same temperature, so what? It is more than a grabbed bite under the plane trees. It is a little picnic, the most natural thing in the world to do given a hint of blue sky and dappled shade. Nothing sums up the simple enjoyment of life better than a picnic. Which is a paradox because the picnic, for all its uncomplicated joy, is a sophisticated pleasure. It hints at Neolithic camp-fire jollity, but at its heart is the revolutionary idea that Nature is something to be sought out as charming and spiritually refreshing rather than feared or exploited. This is a commonplace notion to us weaned on the Romantics, but without it the whole business where ‘one has a home and eats out of doors by choice’ , as Osbert Sitwell points out in his essay Picnics and Pavilions (1944), is inconceivable. William Wordsworth et al. were intrepid picnic pioneers. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was inspired to write the Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) on an excursion to the Quantocks, and if the picnic Holy Grail combines perfect spot, memorable conversation and delicious food, then Wordsworth found it on Helvellyn summit with Humphry Davy and Walter Scott. The moment was so moving Wordsworth was unable to express his emotions, not even recollected in tranquillity afterwards. The Romantics roused such
A Moveable Feast The picnic, despite its associations with sandwiches in Tupperware and windswept British beaches, has an illustrious and exotic history, as Benedict Flynn describes 18 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
018-020_Picnics_5a.indd 18
30/5/12 10:25:50
enthusiasm in us that we fondly imagine picnics as quintessentially British, a reflection of our stoicism faced with a changeable climate. But from sandy sandwiches in Tupperware on a windswept beach to déjeuner-sur-lay-by with bullet-hard boiled eggs and steamed-up windows, we picnic in ignorant bliss. ‘The Englishman’s grand gesture, ’ according to Georgina Battiscombe in English Picnics (1949), is in fact a foreign affair. Appropriately for a moveable feast, picnics have an illustrious and exotic history. The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1859) provides the first crumb on our Ur-picnic trail. Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of one of Khayyám’s quatrains, ‘Here with a loaf of Bread beneath the Bough … Wilderness is paradise enow’ may be cliché, but it takes us to eleventh-century Abbasid Persia where picnicking was an everyday spiritual and secular celebration of Nature, wild or tamed, as ‘al ni’mah’ , or God’s bounty. As the Qur’an describes it, paradise takes the form of a ‘pairi diz’ , a Persian walled garden. The Qur’an details the menu too. If for Khayyám a wilderness picnic was enjoyable, a picnic in a pairi diz eating cherries, dates stuffed with almonds, and fried chicken, was literally a foretaste of heaven – where there would be no need, as Al Zahir, Caliph of Cairo did, to fly in cherries tied to the feet of carrier pigeons. Picnics have long been extolled in Persian poetry as ideal for ‘al atyaban’ , or the ‘two good things’: eating and lovemaking. To be recited at a night picnic, the lines from Kitab al-Tabikh, the tenthcentury Arab cookbook by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq, ‘She shows … the full moon before the evening’ are not about a woman, but rice pudding. And should inter-course picnic poetry fail to entertain, guests could be presented with a basket of kittens. To play with rather than as an amuse bouche. In Persia appreciation of nature spread from the walled pairi diz to the wild. In China gardens were developed to recreate the wild in miniature. Mountains are reduced to scholar’s rocks in the tea garden, and the journey to a sacred grove, home to the Immortals, becomes a meandering path to a tea hut. There, in exile from the hurly-burly, the Tea Ceremony takes place, picnicking at its most refined. It might seem stretching the point to call the Tea Ceremony a picnic. It happens
A picnic is the most natural thing in the world to do given a hint of blue sky and dappled shade indoors and there’s little to eat. But its essence is the contemplation of nature. A sixteenth-century poem from Senno-Rikyu, earliest of the Tea Ceremony schools, captures the moment: ‘I hold a bowl of tea, I see all of nature represented in its green colour, Closing my eyes, I find green mountains and pure water within my heart, Silently drinking, these become part of me. ’ Less refined picnics also have an equally impressive history in China and Japan, from lakeside moon-watching picnics to eating with the ancestors during Qing Ming, the Chinese spring nature festival. Blossom picnics, as much about appetite as aesthetics, were enjoyed by characters in the eleventh-century Heian epic Tale of Genji. The Japanese proverb ‘dumplings over flowers’ hints at the continuing attraction of these picnics. Drinking to oblivion is also part of the entertainment. The sixteenth-century memoir of Emperor Babur’s invasion of Hindustan, Babur-nama, is eloquent about the Mughal’s delight in picnics. En route to slaughter the Maratha armies, Babur found time to picnic among the red and yellow spring blossoms of Parashawar. Early in
the eighteenth century, many years before picnicking became popular in Western Europe, East India Company wallahs happily took to the Mughal’s idea of fun, ‘a curious cold collation set forth on a large Persian carpet under the spreading of lofty trees, where varieties of wine and musick exhilarate the spirits to a cherful livelyness and render every objective divertive’ . But it was not an unknown pleasure. The Hapsburg–Valois Wars (1494–1559) saw the fashionably minded French adopting various Italianisms, among them the fork and syphilis, and courtesy of Catherine de’ Medici (1519–89), niece of Lorenzo the Magnificent and wife of Henry II of France, a new aristocratic distraction, the picnic. Medici taste in gardens and their pleasures had a distinctly Moorish flavour. As well as a tree-house based on Caligula’s nest, or ‘nidium’ , at their Villa di Castello near Florence, and secret ‘fayre eating places’ , the garden borrowed numerous Andalusian elements from Poggio Reale outside Naples, residence of the Aragonese Alfonso II, which to Charles VIII of France in 1495 lacked ‘only Adam and Eve to be an earthly paradise’ . Catherine took the informality of Medici al fresco dining a stage further, and where Catherine went, so followed the court. Venetian ambassadors remarked on her immoderate fondness for ‘simple rustic pleasures’ . She would head into the countryside with a chest, carried by a beast of burden, containing ‘fruit et confitures’ , to consume as mood and situation suggested. At Versailles, Louis XV (1715–54), in his pomp, would also pause for impromptu meals in the Parc-auxCerfs, where he had his one-client brothel, insisting his carriage contained meat,
Opposite Lovers’ Picnic, from a manuscript of the Divan (collected works) of Hafiz, c.1526–7. Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Stuart Cary Welch in honor of Edith Iselin Gilbert Welch. Right Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, 1863, by Édouard Manet. Courtesy of the Musée D’Orsay, Paris.
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 19
018-020_Picnics_5a.indd 19
1/6/12 12:03:56
pastries and fruit. In the grounds of his chateau at Marly-le-Roi to the west of Paris, he escaped court ceremonial with informal souper intimes, a kind of picnic in a counterfeit Arcadia recreated by paintings and architecture. With centuries of pairi diz imagery lodged in our cultural unconscious, it is natural for us to think of the picnic as a temporary return to Eden, ‘that lost felicity’ . The pastoral, an ancient political– poetical mode, also captures the picnic mood, as a momentary rustic existence that is purer and more innocent than urban life. But neither paradise nor pastoral led to a popular picnic culture. For a meal eaten in the face of the elements to become something enjoyed rather than endured, we had to become noble savages. Jean-Jacques Rousseau philosophised a space for the picnic when he reversed the conventional fall from grace. Man and nature are better in the original, man in nature best of all. ‘The sight of the countryside, the succession of pleasant views, the open air, a sound appetite, ’ he wrote in the Confessions, published posthumously in 1782, ‘all these serve to free my spirit’ , sentiments that Wordsworth, the synecdochal Romantic and picnic pioneer, would make powerfully his own. By 1857 picnics were fast becoming a national pastime in Britain. The word alone, according to Chambers’s Journal of that year, summoned ‘the distant murmur of the seas … the hurry of shadowy rivers, and the whisper of autumn woods’ , banishing ‘all things that deform or imbitter our existences’ . Railways, Bank Holidays and Queen Victoria did the rest, ushering in a British golden age of picnics that has obscured their more illustrious foreign history. Curiously, picnics across the Channel, although just as popular, were tainted with a certain immorality that took years to shake off. ‘Il faut éviter les pique-niques, ’ notes Baronne Staffe in Usages du Monde (1889); ‘Casualness prevails … which can lead to impropriety’ . One of art’s most famous picnics is a case in point. Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863) in fact depicts the opening scene of an orgy. His own inventory title for it was La Partie carée, a euphemism for a four-way debauch. Little danger of that under the plane trees in St James’s Square, with soup and sushi.
.
No Picnic: An Etymology
The Pic-Nic Orchestra by James Gillray, 1802. Courtesy The Goldmark Gallery.
The word was not the beginning. And when the word was, ‘pique-nique’ meant something else, a way of doing something in which people contribute their share, rather than an a scenic party of pleasure, with a meal alfresco. The first definition of ‘piquenique’ , in Gilles Ménage’s Les Origines de la langue françoise (1692), insisted it was a neologism, combining ‘pique’ , meaning to pick or peck, and ‘nique’ , a thing of little worth. As approved by the Académie française in 1740, ‘pique-nique’ described an amateurish collection, something thrown together in a light-hearted, even derogatory, way. A letter from Lord Chesterfield to his son in 1748 refers to a ‘piquenique’ or subscription ball in Hanover, hosted by no one individual. Hence an amateur theatrical party of Regency fashionables, where members (Mrs Fitzherbert and the Prince of Wales included) provided the entertainment,
could be called the Picnic Society, and at its first meeting in 1802 enjoyed ‘a pic-nic supper provided from a tavern’ . The Picnic Society disbanded after only a year but its notoriety helped popularise the word in English, and by 1812 picnic had begun to acquire the meaning it has for us. That year Henry Hough, a subaltern on active service in the Peninsular War, could write in his journal about drinking his parents’ health with a glass of grog at a ‘pic-nic in sight of the enemy’ . In 1824, a prose and verse compilation, The Picnic, or, Recreations in literature, was on the cusp of the change in definition. By 1841 Charles Dickens was employing the word in an obsolete way for his selection of stories by different authors, The Pic Nic Papers, collected for charity. And in 1885 the picnic had its own spot in the Classified List of Subscribers to the United Telephone Company, with the category ‘Luncheon and Picnic Basket Manufacturers’ .
20 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
018-020_Picnics_5a.indd 20
30/5/12 10:26:58
The London Library Student Prize 2012 Supported by
londonlibrarystudentprize.com
Judges 2012 Bill Emmott Journalist and Chairman of The London Library Tom Gatti Deputy Editor, The Times Saturday Review Sheila Hancock CBE Actress and author, Chancellor of the University of Portsmouth Sophie Murray Head of Marketing, FreshMinds Erica Wagner Books Editor, The Times
When a member approached the Library last year with the idea of sponsoring a prize for young people, we seized the opportunity to raise awareness of the Library among potential future members and to recognise emerging talent. The result is The London Library Student Prize, established with the generous support of that original benefactor and supported by partnerships with FreshMinds and The Times. Open to final-year undergraduate students at any UK higher education institution, the Prize requires entrants to write an 800-word piece responding to a theme chosen for its relevance to students in the widest possible range of disciplines. Posters, postcards and press releases were sent to departments and student unions at every higher education institution in the UK; the team at FreshMinds profiled the Prize within their extensive student network; and advertisements ran in The Times, helping to ensure that parents, friends and grandparents, as well as students themselves, became aware of the competition. In its inaugural year the theme of the Prize was ‘The future of Britain lies with the right-hand side of the brain’ . We were delighted to receive
more than 160 entries from students at universities from Aberdeen to Falmouth, studying disciplines as diverse as law, anthropology, chemistry and mathematics. Each entry was judged on its creativity, clarity and originality of thought, and confident handling of the subject matter. Our panel of judges had the difficult but privileged task of narrowing this field down to just one winner and three runners-up, with the results made public in late March. The 2012 Prize Winner, whose entry appears overleaf, is Ben Mason. Ben receives a cheque for £5,000, as well as a year’s subscription to The Times, a year’s London Library membership and a mini-internship at The Times. His essay was published in The Times’s Opinion pages on 5 May. The three runners-up – Sylvia Christie, Caroline Criado-Perez and Andrew McCormack – each receive a mini-internship at The Times, a year’s Times subscription and membership of the London Library, and £1,000. Congratulations to our outstanding winners, and our thanks to all who helped bring the Prize to fruition in its first year. We look forward to bringing you news of the 2013 Prize in the next issue of the Magazine.
p
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 21
021-023_Prizewinners_5a.indd 21
30/5/12 10:28:31
‘
There is pessimism in some quarters about the prospect of graduating in such uncertain times, and I think this Prize, providing great opportunity whilst simultaneously encouraging young people to think creatively about solutions to the challenges facing us, sends an important positive message. On a personal level, the generous prize will make a great difference to me next year, and it has prompted me to consider pursuing a career in journalism after I graduate. A mini-internship at The Times will of course be an excellent start with this, and membership of the London Library will give me access to invaluable resources. I would like to sincerely thank The London Library, and its partners at The Times and FreshMinds, for organising the competition and giving such a fantastic opportunity to me and many others. Ben Mason, Winner, The London Library Student Prize 2012
’
The London Library Student Prize 2012 Winner and Runners-Up Ben Mason (Winner) Philosophy & Modern Languages (German), Trinity College, University of Oxford Ben grew up in rural Worcestershire, where he attended the Royal Grammar School. He is currently completing the fourth and final year of his degree, having spent last year in Berlin participating in a programme promoting European integration. Outside his studies he enjoys sport, including rugby and basketball, and music (piano, guitar and saxophone). Ben had not thought seriously about a career in writing or journalism until recently, but was given the Student Prize flyer by a friend and was inspired to enter.
Andrew McCormack (Runner-up) English Language & Literature, Mansfield College, Oxford Andrew grew up in Paisley and attended St Andrew’s Academy, where he was the first person from his school to apply successfully to Oxbridge. He now fulfils a number of leadership roles at Oxford, including welfare officer and Access tour guide at his college, Stage Editor for Cherwell newspaper and Deputy Editor for Oxford Internationalist journal. Andrew also sings in a funk-soul band, performs with the Oxford University Drama Society and last summer won a scholarship to study at the New York Conservatory of Dramatic Arts. This year Andrew will be touring Japan with Thelma Holt’s production of Much Ado About Nothing before working in an orphanage in Bulgaria. He has been accepted for the Master’s degree course in Applied Theatre (Theatre in Education, Community and Criminal Justice System) at Central School of Speech and Drama. While he does not yet have funding for his postgraduate study, the £1,000 Andrew was awarded as a Student Prize runner-up meant he could pay the deposit needed to secure his place on the course.
Caroline Criado-Perez (Runner-up) English Language & Literature, Keble College, University of Oxford After leaving school, Caroline aimed Sylvia Christie (Runner-up) to be an opera singer and lived in English, Homerton College, University London while working to support of Cambridge herself through training. Ultimately Sylvia is co-founder and co-editor of she realised that life as a singer would Aviary magazine, a handmade and be too uncertain, deciding to try for online Arts publication. Her interests a degree and a different life. Caroline include learning foreign languages, studied for her English A-level in writing, and travelling around looking the evenings and at weekends while working full-time in for weird food to eat. During her degree communications, subsequently securing a place to study she worked as a waitress to pay for her English at Oxford, an opportunity she feels extremely lucky to studies in Paris and Berlin and, prior to that, she was employed as have won. Caroline intends to go on to a Master’s degree after a carer for the blind, elderly and disabled. finishing her undergraduate study.
22 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
021-023_Prizewinners_5a.indd 22
30/5/12 10:29:06
Ben Mason’s winning essay
Right-brains and right answers: A plea for more uncertainty Why is it so embarrassing when a politician can’t answer a question? The more agile use the most extraordinary linguistic and logical contortions to avoid those three words – ‘I’m not sure’ . The less agile, the Herman Cains and Michael Howards of this world, are jeered at and lampooned for years afterwards. In his recent and influential book The Master and his Emissary, neurologist, psychiatrist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist highlights some intriguing differences between the right and left hemispheres of the brain when it comes to certainty. The left-brain, it seems, demands it. Only the right-brain is adept at holding several ambiguous possibilities in suspension. So far so good. The left-brain is clearly better cut out for the job of interviewing politicians, right? Straight answers to questions are, after all, no bad thing. Or are they? There is a dark side to this drive for certainty. Unchecked, the left-brain rejects information that doesn’t fit with its accepted theory, is an expert at denial and has a penchant for delusional optimism. Dr McGilchrist argues that we have created a society in which the left-brain is dominant and the vital role of the right-brain in contextualising, empathising and intuiting is increasingly neglected. Well, maybe. Certainly we seem to live in an age of constant demand for conviction – we need an answer and we need it now. Should we bail out Greece? Is Footballer X having an affair? Would you like chocolate on your cappuccino? Nuanced understanding and a circumspect position are signs of weakness. Take the ‘uncertainty’ and ‘unprovenness’ that climate sceptics assure us exists around climate science. No matter how patiently scientists talk of overwhelming likelihoods and near-total consensus, there’s a lingering sense that the sceptic has still won the argument. In our politicians we seem to care less about what they say than how sure they are – nothing short of ‘absolutely convinced’ will cut it. Unreasonable demands for certainty are met with bogus claims of it. While happily disregarding inconvenient evidence, the left-brain not only shows exaggerated optimism about outcomes but also about its own ability. One researcher studying head injuries writes: ‘children with right-brain deficit disorder ignore task obstacles, accept impossible
challenges, make grossly inadequate efforts, and are stunned by the poor outcomes. ’ The left-brain is dogmatic, preferring to rely on theory rather than evidence. Researchers experimenting on splitbrain sufferers, showed them a series of lights, mainly green and occasionally red; the patients had to predict what came next. Those with access only to the right-brain adopted the most successful strategy of picking green every time; those stuck with the left developed complex theories and insisted upon their merit, despite much lower success. When the researchers then rigged the experiment, so that the guesses all turned out to be correct, the right-brainers admitted to doing nothing differently, but the left-brainers assured the researchers there was a pattern, and they had finally cracked it. Patients with right-brain injuries will make up convincing answers to questions, rather than admitting they do not know, and show what the California-based neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran calls ‘an unbridled willingness to accept absurd ideas’ . The left-brain prefers theory to observation, and prefers what it already knows – it is likely to tackle a new problem with a tried and tested solution, even if it is unsuitable. Let’s suppose that today we are facing a set of unprecedented challenges. Reaching for the same old solutions won’t help, nor will denial. How much can harking back to the 1930s really give us an insight into the current recession? Does anyone really know what a collapse of the Euro would mean? When it comes to our ability to correctly predict, say, the future state of the economy, recent experience gives little cause for optimism. If it is true that these challenges require new thinking, it could be that a move away from our sinister obsession with certainty is an important part. Of course decisions still need to be made, but it’s legitimate to make the best judgement on the evidence and the understanding that we have. The right-brain has an affinity for ambiguity – it grasps implicit meaning, metaphor, humour, irony. It sees everything in its context, where the left-brain abstracts and isolates. A wiser understanding and more mature debate of complex issues eschews claims of complete certainty, because such claims are patently bogus. No right-minded person would be taken in by them.
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 23
021-023_Prizewinners_5a.indd 23
30/5/12 10:29:15
HIDDEN CORNERS
Literary Games The peace of the Reading Room may be interrupted this summer by the sounds of beach volleyball from Horse Guards Parade, prompting Richard Moore to explore the Olympics-related titles in the Library’s stacks Around the corner from the London Library, in Ormond Yard, sits Briggs, the gentlemen’s barber. Briggs is a relic, with its stiff leather chairs, shaving brushes and manual clippers, and it is staffed by an elderly Cypriot gentleman who, when not stooped over male heads, sits waiting for customers in a dusty corner, in shirt-and-tie and navy blue overalls. The barber is 89. He has been cutting hair in the same shop for 53 years; for 11 years before that he occupied different premises, a few doors along. When I had my hair cut there recently I asked whether he had seen a lot of changes over these 64 years. He thought about it for a moment. ‘Around here? No. Not really.’ Then it dawned on me: this gentleman began cutting hair in the neighbourhood (‘I used to see George Bernard Shaw walk past on his way to the Library,’ he told me) the same year as London last hosted the Olympics: 1948. This, in turn, got me wondering whether his assertion about this little corner of London remaining unchanged, and by implication unchangeable, might be about to be put to its sternest test yet. In July and August, the Games of the XXX Olympiad
will be happening on his – and the Library’s – doorstep, and it seems impossible that they won’t infiltrate this enclave. Imagine: a warm summer’s day; the Reading Room windows flung open and a favourable breeze from Horse Guards Parade; the sounds of the beach volleyball (think a fusion of Copacabana and Europop) wafting across the square and directly into the Library. It is a tantalising prospect. Equally tantalising, in a different way, is the Library’s small collection of Olympic books. I will be working at the Games as a journalist, so my journey into the back stacks, to the thirteen-and-a-half shelves marked S. Sports &c., constituted research, although whether newspaper editors will be as interested in the ‘Hitler Games’ of 1936, or the previous London Games, as they will be in Usain Bolt or Tom Daley, remains to be seen. It is notable, however, that books about the 1936 and 1948 games dominate, along with titles that cover Olympic politics. This appears characteristic of so much Olympic literature, arguably even the Olympic movement itself: how little it can seem to be concerned with sport. The Olympics book most concerned with sport, in fact,
The Olympic torch carried by an Italian cadet through the streets of Bari on its way to London for the opening ceremony, July 1948. From Janie Hampton’s The Austerity Olympics (2008); photo by Keystone/ Getty Images.
24 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
024-027_Olympics_5a.indd 24
1/6/12 12:04:41
is the jewel in the Library’s collection, which is kept under lock and key. Die Olympischen Spiele/ The Olympic Games is a 2-volume publication, in German and English (vol.1 - Paulou Lampros by Spyridon - vol.2 and Nikolaos Polites; by Pierre de Coubertin and Timoleon Philemon). Volume 1 tells the story of the original Olympic Games, which started in 775 BC, while Volume 2 commemorates their rebirth in Athens in 1896. The two volumes were published in 1896 and 1897 respectively.
Consulting Die Olympischen Spiele feels a bit like undertaking a prison visit; you can only do so under supervision. But, while carefully turning its large, crisp pages, I was struck by the similarities between the ancient and modern games, at least in the founding principles of the latter. The ancient games ‘saw the assembling and welding together of the finest specimens of ancient civilisation’, write the authors of Volume 1, ‘together with the cessation of all hostilities during the
celebration of the games … a step in advance towards the grand idea of united humanity’. (To a point. Women, barbarians and slaves were not permitted to take part.) One of the greatest of ancient Olympians – the Carl Lewis of his day – was Milo of Crotone, who ate an entire four-year-old bull in one day of competition. So strong was Milo, the authors recount, that ‘binding his forehead with a cord, he was able, by holding his breath and pressing his lips together, to break the cord in
two through the force of the swollen veins of his head’. (This was not an Olympic event; neither was bull-eating.) But the idea of a truce – the ‘hieromenia’, or sacred month – for the duration of the Games was one that inspired the founder of the modern Games, Pierre de Coubertin (also the co-author of Volume 2 of Die Olympischen Spiele). Another was his belief in the benefits of sport to the youth of the world. De Coubertin saw the revival of the Games as ‘the logical consequence of the great cosmopolitan tendencies of our times’, and praised the central role of sport in British schools, equating physical exercise to a ‘moral education’; ‘although,’ he added, ‘we may criticise on many points the [British] teaching’. By contrast, the father of the modern Olympics lamented the attitude towards sport in his native France, where ‘physical inertion was considered till recent times an indispensable assistant to the perfectionning [sic] of intellectual powers. Games were supposed to destroy study’. It is an idea that perhaps hasn’t disappeared entirely. ‘How well it would be for France,’ continued de Coubertin, ‘to introduce into our school system some of that physical vitality, some of that animal spirit’. The 1896 Athens Games lived up to many of the founder’s expectations, according to another book in the Library’s collection. This one is not on the Sports shelves, but can be found in the Biography section, and might be the most intriguing account of any Olympics, with an equally remarkable story of how it came to be published. From Bonn to Athens Single and Return: The Diary of John Pius Boland, Olympic Champion Athens 1896 only appeared in print in THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 25
024-027_Olympics_5a.indd 25
1/6/12 12:04:52
Cover image of volumes 1 and 2 of Die Olympischen Spiele/ The Olympic Games (vol.1 by Spyridon Paulou Lampros and Nikolaos Polites; vol.2 by Pierre de Coubertin and Timoleon Philemon), 1896–7.
but the Greeks are a plucky little nation & I consider that England has got a good showing up before the whole world!’ The second Games were in Paris in 1900, and by 1908 Britain had been won round, with the Olympics coming to London for the first time. It is the story of the second London Games, 40 years later, which is the subject of Janie Hampton’s excellent The Austerity Olympics
Foreign Secretary, tells visitors: ‘You will be meeting and holding your sports in London, a capital which was subject to vicious attacks by the enemy … You will find it overcoming its difficulties, maintaining its traditional cheerfulness, and you may be assured of a hearty welcome from all its citizens. ’ This, he adds, despite ‘the world-wide dislocation and economic difficulties’ (perhaps
One ancient Olympian, Milo of Crotone, ate an entire four-year-old bull in one day of competition 2008, after the British Olympic Association was sent a parcel containing the manuscript in 1994. It had been ‘borrowed’ , explained the anonymous sender, from John (known as Jack) Boland; the sender did not say when. In his introduction, Heiner Gillmeister, the editor of Boland’s diary, suggests a connection between the mysterious re-appearance of the manuscript and the subsequent re-appearance in an auction in the USA in 1998 of one of Boland’s two gold medals. Boland had been at university in Bonn and his journal starts there before describing his journey to Athens, where he tried to learn Greek (‘I confess to being disappointed in the language. The extraordinary assimilation of vowel sounds … render it very thin. ’), watched various sports, and then found himself taking part. This came about quite by accident when ‘an English speaking Greek … who was sitting opposite me at dinner asked if I thought of going in for the tennis as the Contestants were very few in number. ‘I was totally unprepared for tennis & spent till 12 hunting
up the various requisites … I began to despair of getting ready made flannels … A tennis bat of sorts was easily secured … but tennis shoes were not to be had in Athens … I had to be content with a pair of leather soled & heeled ones … Play was to begin that afternoon so that one was fairly pressed for time. ’ Nevertheless, Boland, of Irish descent but described in Olympic records as an Englishman, won both singles and doubles tournaments, despite fearing that spectators of his doubles match ‘carried away a poor impression of Tennis as a game’ . Boland’s comments at the conclusion to the Games are interesting in the context of de Coubertin’s praise of British attitudes to sport: ‘The Games were international in character & moreover nearly all the nations represented carried off some event, but it was a perfect disgrace to see England, the first sporting nation of the world, so badly represented … The fact is I believe the English rather looked down on the whole attempt & probably expected the Greeks to go down on their knees & beg them to come,
(2008). The ‘make do and mend’ games (total budget: £760,000) were little short of miraculous, but what makes this book such a delight are the titbits, from prisoners of war turned Olympians, to the yarn about the Iranian boxer, Emmanuel Aghassian, ‘for whom the bright lights of London proved an attraction’ . ‘One night Aghassi [sic] did not come back to the camp and was reprimanded by the chef de mission, ’ Hampton is told by one of the Iranian boxer’s former team-mates. ‘He only had one fight, which he lost and so was eliminated. [He] later moved to Chicago to work as a waiter. You may have heard of his son Andre, who is now a tennis player. ’ Alongside Hampton’s work in the cluster of Olympicrelated books on the Sports shelves are a couple of collectors’ items: the British Olympic Association’s souvenir programme to the 1948 Games, and also the official report. Amid numerous adverts for cigarettes, the programme plays down expectations in a way that contrasts, in all kinds of ways, with 2012. In his message, Ernest Bevin, the
not all that different to 2012, after all). The most recent Games, in Berlin, are politely glossed over in the souvenir programme; peace and reconciliation is the overriding theme, and the 1948 London Games would be infused by a spirit of generosity and friendship. But the souvenir programme also contains a reminder of the British attitude, or arrogance, that Boland identified in his 1896 diary. In an article entitled ‘The Place of Sport in Britain’ , the unnamed author writes: ‘The English, almost without a doubt – it is best to be cautious as well as tactful – were first in the field of what we now understand as sport. ’ While the Battle of Waterloo had been ‘won on the playing fields of Eton’ , the British Empire had allowed Brits to export sport; or, as the article puts it, ‘teach the world what it ought to have learned before, that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull (and dangerous) boy” ’ . It concludes: ‘Therein lay one of the greatest modern achievements … These four countries [of the United Kingdom] have taught the foreign Jack to be quite as
26 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
024-027_Olympics_5a.indd 26
30/5/12 10:32:39
good as his master, and often technically better. ’ There are a number of titles on the 1936 Berlin Games, including Hitler’s Games (1986), in which Duff HartDavis sets out to ‘examine the circumstances … which led to the Berlin Games, and to show how formidable German organisation, reinforced by extraordinary blindness in other countries, enabled the Nazis to get away with a monumental feat of deception’ . In Nazi Games (2007), meanwhile, David Clay Large’s motivation for revisiting the 1936 Games is ‘more recent Olympic controversies, including the contentious awarding of the 2008 Summer Games to Beijing’ . The implication is in itself contentious. As I perused other Olympic titles, including The Olympics: A History of the Modern Games (1992) by Allen Guttmann, and Olympic Politics: Athens to Atlanta 1896–1996 (1996) by Christopher R. Hill, I set myself a challenge. Fiction: was there any Olympic fiction? And would the Library have it? The answer is yes – sort of. Hart-Davis mentions in his book that the American novelist Thomas Wolfe attended the Berlin Games, and features the event in his final novel, You Can’t Go Home Again (1940), published shortly after Wolfe’s death in 1938, at the age of 37. I was intrigued, both by his inclusion of the Olympics in the novel, and by his apparent reasons for being in Berlin. Wolfe enjoyed great success in Germany, and spent some time there on trips to Europe, but currency restrictions meant the royalties he earned there could not be transferred to the USA. The only way to spend them was to return to Germany from the States. And so he decided to enjoy ‘a great blow-out’ at the Olympics.
You Can’t Go Home Again is a great, sprawling novel, whose protagonist, George Webber, is obviously the brilliant but angstridden Wolfe himself. Webber travels to Berlin towards the end of the book, and there are some evocative descriptions of a city that became, during the Games, ‘a kind of annex to the stadium … And all through the day, from morning on, Berlin became a mighty Ear, attuned, attentive, focused on the stadium’ . Webber marvels at the ‘organizing genius of the German people, which has been used so often to such noble purpose, now more thrillingly displayed’ . Yet his observations come to strike a discordant note. By the end of his visit he is left with ‘a picture of a great people who had been psychically wounded and were now desperately ill with some dread malady of the soul’ . If this was so obvious to Wolfe, it underlines a point made by most of the books about the Berlin Olympics: why did the International Olympic Committee insist on the Games being staged there? As for the Games themselves, Webber rejoices at the four gold medals won by the American black athlete Jesse Owens, but Wolfe also registers a more negative response through his protagonist: ‘The sheer pageantry of the occasion was overwhelming, so much so that he began to feel oppressed by it. There seemed to be something ominous in it … the thing that made it seem ominous was that it so evidently went beyond what the games themselves demanded. ’ It is the most memorable line in all the Olympic literature. And even without the undertones that formed such a sinister backdrop to the Berlin Games, it is one to which any host city should perhaps pay heed.
.
POETRY
Cosmo Davenport-Hines, who was the youngest life member of the London Library, died on 9 June 2008, aged 21. The Cosmo Davenport-Hines Prize was set up at King’s College London in his memory. Seth McCurry’s poem is this year’s winner. Rise Above It Racial Politics of the Olympic Games: A Gwendolyn Brooks-esque Retrospective
Fist in sky, They vaulted high, ‘Bove race and creed, They spoke of speed. White flag cast, They hurdled fast, ‘Bove bigotry and pride, They took in stride. Stick. baton. on. They be gone, Past class and state, They out the gate. All for gold, They be bold, Past Satan and skin, They to win. Berlin made messy, Ibolya and Jesse. Mexico fight on, Tommie and John. They rose up, They story told. Seth McCurry
READERS’ OFFER The 24th Aldeburgh Poetry Festival is offering London Library members two for the price of one on tickets purchased for any or all of the four events in the Festival’s new main venue, the Britten Studio at Snape Maltings, on Sunday, 4 November 2012. Ticket offer is limited to one pair per member and subject to availability. Please quote ‘London Library Offer’ when booking. Valid until 30 September 2012. See advertisement on page 14.
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 27
024-027_Olympics_5a.indd 27
30/5/12 10:32:55
MEMBERS’ News Membership Survey 2011 In autumn 2011, The London Library undertook a comprehensive survey of the membership. Members’ responses were analysed independently by an external research agency, Audiences London, and the results have provided the Library with qualitative insights into how members are using, and value, the services and facilities it provides, which will help inform the Library’s future planning and provision of services for members. The results have been crossreferenced against data from the last major membership survey undertaken in 2003 to track any significant differences in the profile of the membership and members’ use of the Library. 6,451 members were included in the 2011 sample (for the purposes of this survey, institutional members were not included) and we received a fantastic response from members, with 2,656 members completing the survey, a 41% return rate. We are very grateful to all the members who took time to complete the survey and for the additional comments that were fed back to us; the information is invaluable.
SUMMARY OF RESULTS Which of the following best describes your main reason for being a member of The London Library? 40%
2011 2003
35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5%
USING THE LIBRARY Respondents rated the three most important services provided by the Library as: the quality, depth and range of the book collection, rated by 95% of respondents as a ‘Very Important’ aspect of the Library’s provision; access to JSTOR and online databases, rated by 45% of respondents as ‘Very Important’; and Periodicals (Bound back runs), rated as ‘Very Important’ to 40% of respondents. A fifth of members (21%) rated the Library’s willingness to purchase book suggestions by members as ‘Very Important’. Electronic Library 60% of respondents rated the provision of electronic journals as ‘Very Important/ Somewhat Important’ and 54% have used the Electronic Library in the past 6 months. A third of members (34%) have never used this service. Of those who do use the Electronic Library, 85% rated the range of e-journals as ‘Excellent’ or ‘Good’, with students being the heaviest users of the Electronic Library, followed by journalists, editors, teachers/ lecturers and writers.
0% Job-related research
Academic study
Private research
Recreational reading/ leisure use
Supporting a literary institution | value
Note ‘Supporting a literary institution I value’ was not offered as an option in the 2003 survey.
How would you rate the following features of the Library? (Results are shown using a relative measure on the vertical axis to compare data from the 2011 and 2003 surveys.)
2 1.8
2011
1.6
2003
1.4 1.2 1 0.8 Graph 1.indd 1
0.6 0.4 0.2 0 Quality and range of books
Service provided by staff
Range of periodicals
London Library website
Opening hours
Opening Hours 74% of members rated the Library’s opening hours as ‘Excellent/ Good’, 23% as ‘Satisfactory’ and 2% as ‘Poor’. Over half of members (57%) rated evening openings on Monday/ Tuesday until 9pm as important and, of those, over a quarter (27%) rated them ‘Very Important’. 64% of members rated Saturday opening as ‘Very Important/ Somewhat Important’. Overall Saturday opening was rated as more important than evening openings and younger members placed a higher value on extended evening opening hours than 24/5/12older 13:05:59 members. When members were asked how likely they were to use the Library if the current opening hours were extended to other evenings during the week and on a Sunday, an average of 41% of respondents said they would THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 29
029-034_News_5b.indd 29
p
30/5/12 10:33:40
‘occasionally’ use the Library during these times, with an average of 7% of respondents saying they would do so on a weekly basis. An average of 38% said they would never use the Library on these evenings, and 45% said they would never visit the Library on a Sunday. Overall satisfaction with opening hours was slightly down in 2011 compared to the last survey in 2003.
Which areas of the collection have you used (browsed, borrowed from or consulted) in the last 6 months? 90%
2011
80%
2003
70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20%
Bibliography
The Times (bound volumes)
Philosophy
Religion
Topography
Science & Miscellaneous
Reading Room reference material
Periodicals and Societies’ publications
Art
Fiction
Literature
Biography
0%
History
10%
Facilities and Services The quality and range of the Library’s collection was rated highly, with 81% of respondents rating it as ‘Excellent’, followed by the service provided by staff, which was rated by 77% of respondents as ‘Excellent’. The Members’ Room achieved the lowest rating of services provided by the Library, with only 19% rating it ‘Excellent’, 32% as ‘Satisfactory’ and 9% rating it ‘Poor/ Very Poor’, the only service to be rated with any significance in these last two categories.
How well is the Library meeting your needs?
80% 60%
40% Website 20% 68% of respondents had visited the Library’s website within the past month 0% and 64% of respondents had consulted Very Well Graph 2b.indd 1 Satisfactorily Very Poorly Well Poorly the Library’s online catalogue from outside the Library. 12% of members have never used the Library’s website. There has been a significant increase in How would you rate your membership in terms of value for money? the use of the Library’s online catalogue from outside the Library by members since the last survey in 2003, with 77% 50% using the online catalogue within the last 2011 2003 month, compared to 55% of respondents in 2003. Visiting the Library 70% of respondents had visited the Library in person within the past month and over a third (38%) had used the Library as a place of work or study within the past month. Being able to use the Library as a place of work or study was valued as important by members, with nearly 9 out of 10 of respondents (87%) rating this as either ‘Very Important/ Somewhat Important’. 77% of members rated the work/ study spaces offered at the Library as ‘Excellent’ or ‘Good’. Use of the Library cross-referenced Graph 4.indd against profession indicates that screenwriters, playwrights and students have the longest ‘dwell time’, i.e. period of time spent in the Library during one visit, among members, with a relatively
29/5/12 15:36:37
0% Very good
Good
Satisfactory
Poor
Very Poor
high proportion staying for more than five hours per visit.
Lecturer’ at 17%. 33% of respondents are retired.
MEMBERSHIP PROFILE Nearly three-quarters (72%) of the survey respondents were aged 55 or over; 62% of respondents were male and 38% female (compared to 64% 1 and 36% respectively in the 2003 survey results). A significant 79% of respondents are involved in the written word in their everyday work, with 43% stating ‘Writer’ as their profession, followed by ‘Teacher/
Type and length of membership Nearly three-quarters (73%) of respondents hold annual membership, with one-fifth (19%) of respondents holding life membership. Nearly 40% of respondents to this survey have been members of the Library for over 20 years, and 10% for over 50 years, highlighting the Library’s loyal and long-standing membership. However, it should be noted that the
p
30 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
029-034_News_5b.indd 30
30/5/12 10:33:59
Library’s membership records indicate that approximately 20% of the membership joined 20 or more years ago, indicating that a greater proportion of long-term members completed the survey than the Library’s newer members, which has affected these results. Member satisfaction Satisfaction levels amongst the membership remain high, with 93% of members rating the Library as meeting their needs either ‘Very Well’ or ‘Well’. 76% of members rate Library membership as ‘Very good’ or ‘Good’ value for money.
In conclusion, this survey has provided the Library with a detailed picture of how members use its services and what they value most. The survey results have given us a useful insight into the importance members place on particular aspects of our services, which will inform the Library’s planning in the years ahead; for example, the Library’s provision of electronic and digital services, which are becoming an increasingly important part of what we offer for many members. The results have also provided a demographic profile of the membership, which will help inform the Library’s future marketing strategies. So, once again, thank you to all the members who participated in the survey; your contribution was greatly appreciated.
New membership cards The Library is in the process of introducing new-style membership cards for new and current members. These will act as borrower tickets and allow members instant access into the Library through both members’ entrances during opening hours. The primary purpose of these new cards is to provide better security at the Library, protecting both members and the collection alike. The cards will also provide the Library with accurate data on use of the building by members, particularly during peak times, which will greatly assist in the planning and provision of services. The new cards require the holder’s photograph, and this will be taken quickly on your next visit to the Library by a member of reception staff, who will activate the card at the same time. If you only use the postal loans service and do not visit the Library you will not need a new membership card. Further details on implementation are available on the Library’s website.
LONDON LIBRARY GIFT IDEAS Our popular membership Gift Vouchers are the perfect gift idea for friends and family who are interested in joining the Library, and make a wonderfully original wedding gift during the summer wedding season. Available in denominations of £50 and £100, the vouchers can be used by the recipient as full and part payment towards the cost of an annual London Library membership. Full Gift Memberships are also available, as well as a range of London Library merchandise, including our stylish canvas bag. Please visit the website or contact the Membership Office for further information. 32 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
029-034_News_5b.indd 32
Have you subscribed to the Library’s e-newsLetter? If you have not already subscribed to our quarterly members’ e-newsletter, full of Library and literary news, event updates and exclusive special offers, please email news@londonlibrary. co.uk with your name, membership number and ‘SUBSCRIBE – MEMBER’ in the subject line.
The London Olympics Library opening hours Owing to predicted travel difficulties and the impact of crowds attending local Olympic venues, which are likely to affect member and staff access, the Library will close at 5.30pm daily throughout the Olympic period and will not open on Saturdays for the dates 27 July–12 August inclusive. We regret any inconvenience caused to members during this time. Further details will be posted on the Library’s website closer to the affected dates.
Reminder: spouse/ partner membership now half price Many members have taken advantage of the new 50% reduced rate for partners, making Library membership just £225 per annum (£18.75 per month) for spouses. If you would like to share your London Library experience with a spouse or partner, memberships can be purchased on the Library’s website or by contacting the Membership Office (tel: 020 7766 5720, email membership@londonlibrary.co.uk).
Diary date London Library AGM The 171st Annual General Meeting of The London Library will be held in the Reading Room at 6pm on Tuesday, 6 November 2012.
p
30/5/12 10:34:23
The Hay Festival and The London Library Annual Lecture 2012 The Library once again had a stand at the Hay Festival this summer (31 May–10 June), in the festival’s 25th anniversary year. Renowned biographer and London Library member Claire Tomalin gave our Annual Lecture at the festival, speaking about another Library member, Charles Dickens, in this, the bicentenary year of his birth. As always, an edited version of the Annual Lecture will appear in the autumn issue of the London Library Magazine, allowing all members to share in this special event.
The 2012 London Library Life in Literature Award The 2012 London Library Life in Literature Award, sponsored by Heywood Hill, was presented by HRH The Duchess of Cornwall at the Library’s Annual Literary Dinner on 1 May. A total of 100 guests, including Founders’ Circle members, enjoyed speeches by Sir Tom Stoppard and Her Royal Highness before a presentation to this year’s recipient, historian Philip Mansel. Created in 2011 to recognise those who have made an exceptional contribution to literary life and the enjoyment of books, The London Library Life in Literature Award, sponsored by Heywood Hill, each year focuses on a theme. This year’s theme, monarchy and royal biography, led a panel of five judges – who remain anonymous – to highlight Philip Mansel’s brilliant work on such subjects as Napoleon I, Louis XVIII and Prince CharlesJoseph de Ligne. Accepting his award, Dr Mansel remarked that the Library’s rich collections had been invaluable to his work. Our thanks to all who attended this special event. For information on joining the Founders’ Circle, please contact Bethany McNaboe in the Development Office on 020 7766 4750 or bethany.mcnaboe@londonlibrary.co.uk
Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cornwall with, from left to right, Nicky Dunne, Chairman of Heywood Hill; Philip Mansel, winner of the 2012 London Library Life in Literature Award; and Sir Tom Stoppard, London Library President. 34 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
029-034_News_5b.indd 34
30/5/12 10:35:08
EATING OUT
DINING OUT NEAR THE LONDON LIBRARY
2 4 6 10
5 11
This is an advertisement feature. To advertise please call Janet Durbin
8
7 12 9
on 01625 583180.
1
3
1 AL DUCA Serving modern Italian cuisine, Al Duca focuses heavily on bringing out the very best elements of what is one of the most acclaimed gastronomic regions of the world. Simple fresh ingredients are skilfully combined in a wide range of traditional dishes offered both in classic style and with a new twist, all following Pulze’s ethos of reasonably priced good Italian food. Now serving breakfast. 4–5 Duke of York Street, SW1, 020 7839 3090. alduca-restaurant.co.uk
4 CUT AT 45 PARK LANE World-renowned chef Wolfgang Puck has made his restaurant debut in Europe opening CUT at 45 Park Lane, a modern American steak restaurant featuring great food in a contemporary and dynamic environment. Located in Dorchester Collection’s new Mayfair hotel, CUT at 45 Park Lane mirrors the award-winning original CUT in Beverly Hills, offering outstanding steaks, a superb wine list and impeccable service. 45 Park Lane, W1, 020 7493 4554. 45parklane.com/CUTat45ParkLane
7 FRANCO’S Franco’s has been serving the community of St James’s for over 60 years. Open all day, the personality of the restaurant evolves from a quietly and gently efficient breakfast venue to a sharp and charged lunch atmosphere, to elegance and romance in the evening. The lunch and dinner menus highlight carefully prepared traditional and more modern Italian dishes. Our service is always relaxed, friendly and personal. 61 Jermyn Street, SW1, 020 7499 2211. francoslondon.com
10 THE GRILL AT THE DORCHESTER Brian Hughson, Head Chef at the Grill, is passionate about using quality produce sourced from the British Isles. In addition to the British and classic grill dishes offered at the Grill, Brian has reinstated classics from the original Grill menu such as Dish of the Day, and the traditional roast-beef carving trolley introduced at the Grill when it first opened in 1931. The Dorchester, Park Lane, W1, 020 7629 8888. thedorchester.com
2 BELLAMY’S RESTAURANT Located in central Mayfair (near New Bond Street), Bellamy’s offers a classic French brasserie menu with an affordable famous-name wine list. The Oyster Bar, among its other dishes, serves Bellamy’s famous ‘open’ sandwiches. Le patron mange ici. Open for lunch Mon–Fri; dinner Mon–Sat. 18–18a Bruton Place, W1, 020 7491 2727. bellamysrestaurant.co.uk
5 DELHI BRASSERIE For over 20 years, the Delhi Brasserie has served outstanding traditional Indian cuisine to the discerning diner. Situated in the heart of Soho on Frith Street and next to Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, we provide a welcoming and vibrant atmosphere. Pre- and post-theatre menus are available. 15% discount for students with ID. Special offer available for group bookings. 44 Frith Street, W1, 020 7437 8261. delhibrasserie.com
8 GETTI Jermyn Street A modern Italian restaurant at the fast-paced heart of London’s West End, Getti Jermyn Street is an authentic Italian dining venue in London’s historic tailoring district, dedicated to offering a traditional and memorable Italian dining experience. A splendid destination for London locals and tourists alike, Getti Jermyn Street focuses on serving simple, regional dishes from mainland Italy. Private dining available. 16/17 Jermyn Street, SW1, 020 7734 7334. getti.com
11 HIX AT THE ALBEMARLE This fashionable restaurant offers an outstanding menu of classic British dishes, using local seasonal ingredients. Mark Hix and Marcus Verberne offer a full à-la-carte menu alongside a special set-lunch, pre-theatre and dinner menu of £27.50 for 2 courses and £32.50 for 3 courses. Brown’s is also home to the award-winning English Tea Room and the chic Donovan Bar. Brown’s Hotel, Albemarle Street, W1, 020 7518 4004. thealbemarlerestaurant.com
6 THE FOX CLUB Situated a stone’s throw from Green Park and the famous Hyde Park. Our Dining Room is one of London’s best-kept secrets and, for those in the know, a lunch-time essential. The modern European menu changes on a weekly basis, offering refined excellence without being pretentious. The effect is a change from the jaded palate of life. The Fox Club now offers a delightful afternoon tea from 3– 5pm. 46 Clarges St, W1, 020 7495 3656. foxclublondon.com
9 GREEN’S Green’s Restaurant and Oyster Bar is a truly British institution that serves world-class food. Simple, well-presented dishes that everyone likes and that allow you to have meaningful conversation. Fresh fish, meat and seasonal game. 36 Duke Street St James’s, SW1, 020 7930 4566. greens.org.uk
12 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. To make a reservation, please quote the London Library Magazine. 55 Jermyn Street, SW1, 020 7629 9955. wiltons.co.uk
3 BERRY BROS. & RUDD Fine Wine Lunches & Dinners Choose between Berry’s Townhouse or the 17th-century London Cellars. The Townhouse hosts intimate luncheons with fine food and wine. The atmospheric London Cellars are London’s most exclusive fine-dining venue. Housed within an impressive vaulted Napoleon Cellar, you will be treated to an unforgettable luncheon. Tickets pre-booked. 3 St James’s Street, SW1. 0800 280 2440. bbr.com/wine-events
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 35
035_Restaurants_5a.indd 35
30/5/12 10:40:32