A great library is a book of lives … and a life-changer

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Like countless other writers, I owe a great debt to libraries in general. Like many, I owe a particular one to the British Library.

A great library is a book of lives. On its myriad pages, the minds of people across the ages have left their unique imprints. And I can attest to the way a great library can change lives, too.

Along with the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the British Library is a copyright library. That means it receives, by law, a copy of every book published in Britain. The need to accommodate books – and their readers – meant that it outgrew its earlier site, the famous Round Reading Room at the British Museum. That closed in October 1997, and the British Library opened its new premises next to St Pancras Station on 25 June 1998.

At the time, I was living and working in central London. I had begun research for what became my book Tolkien and the Great War at the turn of 1997–98. So the new British Library quickly became something of a home from home.

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