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April 19, 2006
Ministers and Mysteries
In our country, as everyone knows, we don't have a Minister of Literature and Libraries, but we do have a Minister of Story-Telling. He resides in the Ministry of Common Sense which is situated underneath Victoria Station (just next to the Victoria Library and Buckingham Palace). He is called Mr Woolly Jumper.
He sent a message to me today by our normal means of correspondence, which is top secret, in which he asked me to stop sending out press releases about the state of the British Library service. While I consider his request, I shall continue to inform everyone on this blog of what is going on in our libraries, or not.
My favourite author of the moment is the Turk, Orhan Pamuk. We share the experience of publishing books about Kars, which is a city in eastern Turkey. Mine is called "The seige of Kars" and is about an event in 1855 in which a wonderful old general called William Fenwick Williams had to concede defeat to the Russian army. Orhan Pamuk's book is called "Snow". Reading his books is like climbing into a bowl of sweet apple crumble: you never know where you are heading but everything is delicious.
Orhan Pamuk was arrested last December and charged with insulting the Turkish parliament because of a story he told about an event that took place 90 years before. We should take our own writers that seriously.
"Snow" by Orhan Pamuk is published in an excellent translation by Maureen Freely by Faber and Faber. ISBN 0571 218318. On this blog we will advertise books, book shops and public libraries. Contact me on tim.coates@yahoo.com
Posted by Tim Coates at April 19, 2006 7:47 PM
Comments
A beautiful Library is indeed a gorgeous thing and that's why we are decorating Victoria library at this very time. This is a grand Victorian building - with many of the problems that are associated with being over 100 years old - leaking roofs and skylights and a well worn shabby air. Well the roofs have all been mended and architects have defined a 15 colour palette to emphasise the architectural aspects we are so proud of - and to show off the oak shelving by Gillow.
The excellent and indeed famous music library Tim mentions is in fact on the first floor of the library with specialist staff to help users - only the store is in the basement. This library has an amazing coverage of music and is a valuable and well used resource both for serious musicians and for those who play or make music for pleasure. We are currently applying for Heritage Lottery Funding in order to improve access to the collection for all music lovers.
Victoria closed on 3 April for redecoration and will reopen on 15 May. We recommend a visit to see this and any of the other 11 libraries in Westminster We have nearly 3 million visits a year to our library (including 200,000 to Victoria) and lend over 2 million items.
Posted by: On behalf of Westminster City Council at April 21, 2006 3:13 PM