Guest post written by author Kate Thompson
Kate Thompson was born in London and worked as a journalist for women’s magazines and national newspapers before becoming a novelist. Over the past ten years, Kate has written twelve fiction and nonfiction titles, three of which have made the Sunday Times top ten bestseller list. She now lives in Sunbury with her husband, two sons, and two rescued Lurcher dogs, Ted and Saphhie. Kate’s latest book The Little Wartime Library is out now and based on the remarkable true story of Bethnal Green Underground’s shelter library in WW2.
The air is ripe with steam. It curls the edges of the paperbacks, infusing the pages of the stories with a sweet, starchy smell.
‘What can you recommend today, Rene?’ calls a flustered mum, ushering her brood of kids and two bag loads of washing through the steamed-up doors.
‘All right Vi, how’s yourself?’ Rene, the manageress of the London laundromat pulls a paperback off the long wooden shelf that runs behind the washing machines. ‘Pam borrowed this last week, Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, reckons it’s the best book she’s ever read.’
‘Smashing, I’ll give it’ll a whirl.’
Once the sheets are dealt with, Vi reaches for Rebecca and a roll-up. Manderley will make a pleasant enough escape from London, if only until the sheets are washed and tumbled dry.
I adore little libraries which pop up in the most surprising of places, like wild flowers between the cracks of paving stones. The London Laundromat Library is one such gem. I love the potential to escape into a world beyond the domestic drudgery of life.
A library doesn’t have to be grand or substantial to make a difference. In my new novel, The Little Wartime Library, I’ve written the true story of a magical little library built over the tracks of an Underground Tube tunnel, helping war-weary Londoners to escape fear through literature. Like the Laundromat Library, its paperbacks were shabby and battered, but it didn’t matter. The point is that the best libraries change and transform lives, introducing us to books that make us view the world differently.
In 1955, while the Laundromat Library was going strong, 10,000 miles south, adventurous 25-year-old explorer Dick Foster was busy constructing his little makeshift library.
“I was lucky enough to be the base leader on a six-man Falkland Islands Survey in Antarctica For two years, we were stationed on a beautiful, egg-shaped island. Together, we constructed a pre-fabricated wooden hut. The hut protected us from the elements, but it also served to house our little library of books, a selection of fiction and non-fiction and a copy of the Bible. The library was formed from the few books each of us were able to bring with us and a packing case of second-hand books provided by the Survey. It’s important to have books near, wherever you are in the world.”
Dick is 92 and these days, leads a quieter life, but he too was shaped by a library’s existence. But aren’t we all? Who doesn’t remember the childhood library that took us from suburbia and flung us though the back of the wardrobe into Narnia?
We live in such a polarised world. Sometimes it feels as if the only thing that truly bonds us as humans is a shared love of reading, which makes the librarians who go to such intrepid lengths to connect people with books, unsung heroes.
Take the Horse-Riding Librarians of Kentucky. During the Great Depression, these plucky women splashed through iced-over creeks and rode up high into the Kentucky mountains, their saddlebags stuffed with books, doling out reading material to isolated rural people.
“Libraries” were housed any in facility that would have them, from churches to post offices. Librarians manned these outposts, giving books to carriers who then climbed aboard their horses, panniers loaded with books, and headed into the hills, feet frozen in the stirrups.
This tradition carries on into the 21st century. In Colombia what could be more gratifying than the sight of two donkeys clopping through the streets, bringing books to children in faraway villages?
In the late 1990s, teacher Luis Soriano, was concerned that his students had no access to books at home. By adapting the packsaddles of his two donkeys, Alfa and Beto, from carrying water to books, Luis created a makeshift mobile library. With that the ‘Biblioburro’ was born.
When people can’t get to the books, librarians often come up with ingenious ways of getting books to the people.
During the Blitz, when Britain was pounded nightly by German bombers, one London council came up with the idea of London’s first travelling library. A hefty, 3-ton Ford van filled with 2,000 books on open access shelves drove through the bomb-cratered streets serving stretcher parties, ARP and Civil Defence Units.
‘People without books are like houses without windows,’ declared the mayor of St Pancras as it’s unveiling.
Eighty-two years on from the end of the Blitz, resourceful libraries are still going strong.
In Venice they deliver books by gondola. In Albena, on the Black Sea you will find 6,000 books in an open air beach library. In sleepy English villages many iconic red phone boxes have been converted into tiny libraries and in America, The Little Free Library scheme, a non-profit organisation, encourages readers in neighbourhoods to enjoy books from the small but well-stocked book boxes.
When researching my book, I even interviewed Kathleen Milne in the outer Hebrides, a remote chain of Scottish islands, who paused between taking books by ferry to tell me:
‘Libraries are part of what it is to be human. It is one of our greatest human achievements. We should nurture them and support them.’
Three cheers to these book warriors I say.
I have saved my biggest admiration for last. For the librarians of Ukraine.
‘We have set up bomb shelters in many of our country’s libraries and are providing shelter to many families,’ Oksana Brui, president of the Ukrainian Library Association emailed to tell me from her underground shelter. ‘Our libraries are buzzing like hives, full of librarians, readers, refugees and volunteers.’
‘Many of our libraries have turned their underground book storage spaces into bomb shelters for local communities – they are cosy with lots of interesting books around! Tea and support is also offered, so this is already considered a new library service.’
Oksana describes their work as ‘bibliotherapy’ adding: ‘Today Ukraine is fighting not only for its own independence and the future of its children. We are fighting for the future of the whole world!’.
