The latest on the cyber attack on the British Library (see below): all very frustrating and quite scary, but no doubt even more so for staff.
It reminded me of Nicholson Baker’s fine book, The Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, about the dangers of relying on microfiche for retaining runs of provincial newspapers. Paper is a good and durable medium, whereas, as we’re learning, cyber space is not.
I am so sorry to hear news of the death of Antonia Byatt, who I admired greatly.
When I went to the V&A, my job was attached to its Education Department. In the summer of 1983, I was asked to arrange a series of lectures in connection with Roy Strong’s exhibition, ‘Artists of the Tudor Court’. They were on a Sunday afternoon and I was told that no-one would come to lectures on a Sunday in August because they would all be in the country. I asked Antonia Byatt.
For those of you who live in North London, I recommend a visit to the Koppel Project, a building at the top end of Downshire Hill where there is a small exhibition of the teshigoto collective – beautiful scarves, jewellery and clothes. It’s a long way by bicycle:-
Last time I failed to post anything for a few days, I got a kind note from a reader checking that I was all right. The truth is that I have less to write about these days. I gave up writing about politics when (British) politics itself resumed a semblance of normality, although one can hardly say that of international affairs. And I feel that I have written about everything architectural within easy reach of E1. So, the blog has entered a period of torpor while I concentrate on writing about Vanbrugh, due for publication, I hope, in 2026, the year of his tercentenary. That at least is making good progress, so my posts will remain intermittent for the foreseeable future.
I went to a meeting in St. Anne’s, Limehouse yesterday about how to raise money for its forthcoming restoration. It certainly needs it. I was shocked by the state of the interior, owing to the damp. Of course, the interior is not original Hawksmoor, but a faithful restoration by Philip Hardwick after a disastrous fire on Good Friday 1850:-
Well, I can’t say that a day spent in the British Library following a cyber attack is a great experience, in spite of the friendliness and helpfulness of the librarians. There is no access to manuscripts. I realised that this is probably not because the manuscripts aren’t there and probably fairly easily available, but because the details of readers are held electronically. I felt sorry for the poor scholar who had come over from America to consult sheet music and offered to go and read it in York (he meant Boston Spa). There was no way he would be able to. It is still possible to consult printed catalogues for books published before 1972, but the class mark then has to be transferred to a traditional hand-written form and my handwriting is now illegible, so the author, title and classmark had to be dictated. It then turned out that three of the four books I wanted to consult were only available in the Rare Books Reading Room and when I got there, I was told one was in a safe which was inaccessible – I suppose, again, because of electronic security. I then made the fatal mistake of leaving a couple of rare books out on the desk while I went back to the humanities reading room to order two more books for tomorrow, having forgotten that I had handed in my reader’s pass, so I couldn’t actually get into the Humanities Reading Room without identification and was only allowed back into the Rare Books Reading Room with difficulty. They probably thought I had Alzheimer’s. I think I will spend tomorrow in the London Library.
Over the last two weeks, I have been trying in vain to order some manuscripts to consult in the British Library. Assuming that it was something wrong with my Internet connection, I came into the Library myself. But it turns out that all systems are down: no access to the website, no availability of MSS, no possibility of ordering manually. If one wanted evidence of our huge dependence on the Internet, I can think of no better example.
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
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