the British Library

is a zoo

I was driven into the British Library by Rhyme Time. It was two Thursdays ago and I needed to get out of the house. I had just been there for too long, (18 years), and needed to shake things up.

My first thought was to go to one of the quieter libraries local to me, but on looking up the Opening Times, I saw that Rhyme Time was on. I loved Rhyme Time when my children were little - when under-5s sit in a circle with their assigned adults and sing “Zoom Zoom Zoom, We’re Going To The Moon”, then throw books around until kicking-out time - but I’m sure you can appreciate that once your Rhyme Time days are over, you don’t much want to go back.

So off I went to the British Library, which is next to King’s Cross Station. I haven’t been to this library since I was probably 23 and remember it being enormous and very quiet. I didn’t return, because I had only gone out of curiosity. When you are a journalist you have to make a lot of phone calls, which is incompatible with being in a library.

I also feel like working in the British Library - unless there really are rare books you need to look at - is unforgivably pretentious. And if there’s one thing I abhor beyond all else, it’s pretentiousness.

N.B. This is a good example of the narcissism of small differences - which is the social phenomenon of loathing someone slightly different from you far more than someone completely different from you. I teeter dangerously close to pretentiousness: I am a writer, I live in north London, my children don’t have smartphones, we go on holiday to Hadrian’s Wall and so on. I am always wary of slipping sideways into Dark Side levels of pretentiousness.

I arrived at the red-brick edifice of the British Library at 0927 that Thursday and joined the queue to get in, then followed the signs to the basement to get a card for the reading rooms. I was already looking around me at all the people thinking, “This place is a zoo” and it was only 0934! I said to the nice older gent in the mustard-yellow beanie hat who issued my card, “Which is the quietest room?” and he replied “Maps. Or Science - third floor.”

Of course. I remember from my university days that any Humanities library is like a disco. Just a place to stash your books while you go out for coffee with a friend. If you want to get something done you have to repair to somewhere obscure, like Maps.

Anyway, I got my card from Beanie Hat Man, then slogged over to Lockers, which was abuzz with people taking off raincoats and stuffing things into the long metal banks of boxes. The theme music to Severance started playing in my head. I’m always freaked by lockers that have the instruction to input a code twice to lock and then input the code again to unlock. Yeah right, what are the chances of that working? I projected ahead in time, to when I would have to go and find Beanie Hat Man - my only friend in this place - and whisper, “I can’t get my locker door open.”

At this point I was about to leave but then thought, Stop being pathetic, this is just tiresome startup admin. Once you’ve got the hang of this, it will all be fine. Your prejudices will fall away and you will love the British Library like everyone else does.

I put my things in one of those godforsaken clear plastic bags and trudged up some architecturally interesting spiral stairs to Third Floor: Maps. The bag was heavy, packed with all my stuff, as I didn’t trust the lockers to open again, and I had to heave the bag onto my hip like a baby - ugh.

I showed my card to the attendant at the desk and then found a spot far away from anywhere. And, yes, I did good work for an hour. But 11am is my breakfast time, so I quit my desk, trudged all the way down the stairs to Lockers for my re-useable cup and foil-wrapped bread and butter and went to find somewhere to sit.

The communal areas were now solid with human flesh. It was like the departures lounge of an airport. They were chatting, snacking in one of the cafes and sending emails while sitting at badly-lit single-person desks. Most horrifying, there were men of fighting age wearing shirts-no-tie and headsets, walking up and down talking about their start-ups. I noted with relief occasional little clutches of old boys chatting about naval strategy and one or two Hampstead Women dressed entirely in Toast with little round horn-rimmed spectacles. But they were a rarity.

From my elevated spot on the spiral stairs I identified a small space in the atrium where I could sip my tea and nibble my bread, but before I could get there a massive party of seven year-olds all wearing high-vis vests gilets trooped in and took my seat.

I froze. Children! Any minute now they would start Zoom, Zoom Zoom.

I eventually perched on a tiny strip of bench next to a man with an under beard, who was wearing a very noisy, rustling raincoat. He presently got up and loudly greeted some friends, in german. People were now unwrapping Pret sandwiches and stuffing their faces, chewing and staring into space, like cows. One man was FaceTiming someone from his laptop while eating a homemade lunch on his lap with a knife and fork. I finished my bread-and-butter and tea, slogged back down to Lockers to put away my re-useable cup, then trudged back up the stairs to Maps.

I poked about at my laptop for another hour and then went home.

“It’s the hack,” said Zoe, who wrote her DPhil at the library. She is referring to the 2023 cyber-attack on the British Library that wrecked the book-recall systems, (among other things). “All the academics fled and the undergraduates filled the vacuum.”

I did return the next day. The fact is that although the communal area of the BL is chaos, like the world after the fall of the Tower of Babel, the reading rooms are very quiet, and once you’ve got your head down, it’s easy to focus. I believed that once I accepted this, all my prejudices would fall away and I would love the British Library like everyone else.

So back I went to Kings Cross, feeling more confident now. Here is the queue, there are the lockers, up the stairs to Maps. Despite the hack, I had been able to retrieve an actual book, about British folklore and witchcraft, (my second novel is about a woman who turns into a witch). I was now feeling bad for despising British Library users as pseuds and poseurs.

After about an hour and a half, into the zen space of Maps sauntered a young man wearing baggy jeans, black loafers, a rugby shirt and a faded red baseball cap perched on his mop of curly hair. He had a face like a square of Spam. An undergraduate! In Maps! He was so reminiscent of undergraduates at my own university, Bristol, that I fell into a little reverie. I suppose it’s because the 90s are back again. Or maybe Sloaney undergraduates have always dressed like that. Here we all are, I thought, just humble intellectuals getting some work done.

But then, oh then. His wretched bloody girlfriend arrived. They started kissing and giggling! I looked up sharply from the chapter in my book about witch-marks and shot metaphorical streams of sulphuric acid at the back of their heads. They took no notice. After seven minutes of trying to ignore their revolting necking, I packed up and stamped out. I said to the attendant at the desk as I left, “I’m leaving this room because those two are kissing and chatting.” I pointed, in a last ditch hope that sparks might fly out of the end of my finger and zap the adorable couple. But I clearly need more practice.

The attendant did nothing, not that I expected him to. But I did want the couple to see.

So farewell, then, British Library. Sorry about the hack, but there’s no excuse for necking undergrads.

I have mostly written this in case you don’t have access to the British Library and feel left out. This is me telling you that you’re fine at your kitchen table, which is where I am now.