Bristol Central Library

We went to Bristol last week. My favourite thing about it was the Central Library, on College Green. As it is a public building and has a lovely window that I wanted to see from inside the upper floor, we went in. Upstairs there are old wooden desks like booths,with separate reading lights and matching chairs. I didn't have a camera but here are some photos from the Internet.

This is a most beautiful room - it has wifi and you can work with your computer. Many of the books are out of date, but few people want books now so that doesn't matter. Note the filing cabinets.

This picture shows the large window and the interesting shapes of the upper windows.

The rear elevation

KEY FACTS

• By a major architect of the London Underground
• Has been described as a masterpiece of early modern design
• Cleverly designed to fit in with historical remains next door [haha the Cathedral!]
• Look out for Tudor-style features and 21 literary sculptures on the main frontage

The present Bristol Central Library opened in 1906 in a building designed by Charles Holden (1875–1960). Holden is well known for his later designs of London underground stations, war cemeteries and memorials. His library used the latest techniques but also featured a style he called Neo-Tudor (especially on the main entrance frontage). This style echoed the Norman Abbey Gatehouse next door and includes tower and spire forms, Tudor-style windows and Tudor-rose decorations.

 The main frontage also includes 21 sculptures of English literary figures (by Bristol-born Charles Pibworth), from Chaucer to St Augustine. Holden’s attractive interior uses styles ranging from Byzantine to Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts and Classical. There is a striking Classical Reading Room, while the Bristol Room contains fittings brought from King Street’s 1740 library building and includes fine oak panelling. An extension to the right of the main entrance was added in 1966–8. In 2000 a glass-canopied access ramp and entrance lobby was added on the right and the interior was extensively modernized.

Bristol was actually one of England’s first cities to have a public library, having had one since 1613. When Charles Holden worked on the 1906 library building he was an assistant at the firm of H. Percy Adams. He was made a partner in the firm as the result of this design. The approach Holden has used is often described as Edwardian Freestyle. It is easy to see here the many influences on his work. For example, the façade at the back is totally different to the entrance frontage. It is less decorated and more minimal in style, similar to Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s design for the Glasgow School of Art, which was designed around the same time. The library’s variety of styles is even more clearly seen inside.

- See more at: http://bristolopeningdoors.org/bristol-central-library/#sthash.xCVWVAHv.dpuf

The Library of Unrequited Love by Sophie Divry and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, part 1

Reading Ray Bradbury's book (published in 1954) made me feel as though I was falling in love, sliding into a situation in which I had no control. It's such a mixed feeling that I kept putting the book aside and reading other books and papers instead. And as soon as I had finished it I read this new book by a French writer, Sophie Divry, and it seemed to be on the same theme. Bradbury's book is 60 years old and this new one seems to share his concerns. Bradbury was so prescient.

Let me start with the Library one. First, it has only 90 pages, and it's all one soliloquy. The librarian is middle-aged, plain-spoken and impatient. She is angry about her snobbish senior colleagues, the ignorant, public that doesn't value books, and how she is ignored. She rather loves the Dewey Decimal System, she loves Maupassant and most of all she loves a young researcher named Martin, who works diligently in her section and once exchanged a few words with her. She loves the back of his neck. Going to work is great because he might come in. He might notice her.

But this is not her only story! She also loves Eugene Morel, who in 1908 published a survey of libraries and suggested that libraries should make it easier for the people to read. Secretly, she is an enthusiast for reading who believes that people can be seduced into reading literature. She is a cultural snob who hates trashy books.

"All the hundreds of books pouring off the presses, ninety-nine percent of them they'd do better to use the paper for wrapping take-aways. And for libraries, it's a disaster. The worst ones are the books on instant history, current affairs: no sooner commissioned than written, printed, televised, bought, remaindered, then taken off the shelves and pulped. The publishers ought to put a sell-by date on them, because they're just consumer goods."

"when you come into this library, what's the first thing you see? Kids wet behind the ears in front of the comic book shelves. And alongside them, Music. Just behind that, DVD's, that's where cultural democracy has got us. It's not a library any more, with silence reigning over shelves full of intelligence, it's a leisure centre where people come to amuse themselves. ... but it's all phoney, it's a lie ... Because culture isn't the same thing as pleasure. Culture calls for a permanent effort by the individual to escape the vile condition of an under-civilized primate."

She is concerned that young people are always wearing ear-phones:

"Noise, noise, noise, never the silence of the book. We ought to react, do something, the minister is deceiving you, you young folk, he knows perfectly well that people don't begin to foster thoughts of revolution when their ears are bombarded by noise, but in the murmuring silence of reading to oneself. "

So you see, the love of the book is not all about Martin, it's also about the love that the civic idealists - whose ideas were once revolutionary! - showed for the public, the love that involved making a quiet space for the public to read. To read great books, or newspapers; but the public didn't want those things; they spurned the love of the civic benefactors. That is the sad story, and Ray Bradbury's book sees this trend coming and does something else with it..., more next time.

Valentine's ball tonight, and nothing to wear...