British Library

Last week I spent a day “working” in the British Library. And I use inverted commas because no work, in the conventional sense, got done. Couldn’t concentrate at all, to be honest. Why? Well, it certainly had nothing to do with the library’s policy of admitting undergraduates, which has upset the likes of the biographer Claire Tomalin and the historian Antonia Fraser so much.

In fact, I’ve just looked up the vociferous complaints that the historian, professor and TV personality Tristram Hunt has made in relation to the issue, which, like international football tournaments, seems to flare up biennially, and I have no idea what he’s on about. In May 2006, for instance, he complained in a newspaper article that the admission of undergraduates means “it is proving ever more difficult even to get a seat”. But the longest I’ve waited for a desk in the 12 months I’ve spent, on and off, working in the place is five minutes.

Last year he was quoted in The Times complaining that the library has for undergraduates become “a groovy place to get a frappuccino” rather than a place to study books. All very well, but the BL café doesn’t sell frappucinos and you can’t take beverages into the reading rooms anyway.

Then, around the same time, he was quoted in an American paper, saying about undergraduates: “They’re sitting next to me with their Walkmen on and I tell them to turn it off. I’ve become like a granddad and I’m only 33.”

Tristram: no British youth has used a Walkman since 1999. They’re called iPods and MP3 players now. You may be 33 but you sound 73.

Indeed, it strikes me that there are many more serious problems with the BL as a working environment besides the undergraduates, not least…

Read atTimes Online