96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB

Phone:

033-0333 1144

Website:

www.bl.uk

Opening times:

Mon-Thu 9:30–20:00, Fri: 9:30-18:00, Sat 9:30–1700, Sun and holidays: 11:00-17:00

How to get there:

Tube: King’s Cross

Entry fee:

Free

Additional information:

Café and shop

The British Library has only existed as a separate institution since 1973 but its origins are far more historic. As part of the British Museum, founded in 1753, it was housed until 1997 in the main museum building, with magnificent purpose-built reading rooms. In the 1960s, however, it was recognised that the Library had far outgrown its premises and in 1974 the present site in St Pancras was purchased. In 1998, after a catalogue of financial crises, Colin St. John Wilson’s new building, originally designed in 1977, was finally opened. The British Library’s books (humanities and science); the India Office Library; and the British Institute of Recorded Sound are now united under one roof. At the core of the Library’s collections are the three foundation collections of the British Museum, which all contained manuscripts and books: that of Sir Hans Sloane (d. 1753); Sir Robert Cotton (d. 1631); and the Harleian collection of Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford (d. 1724). The Library today is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world and contains several treasures: two contemporary copies of Magna Carta, 1215; the manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf; the wonderfully illuminated early Northumbrian ‘Lindisfarne Gospels’, written c. 715–20 in honour of St Cuthbert; William Caxton’s two editions of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, 1476 and 1483; the exceptional ‘Sforza Hours’ from Milan (c. 1490–1520); and the ‘Codex Arundel’ containing manuscript sheets of Leonardo da Vinci’s mathematical notes and diagrams. The Codex was once owned by Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, who travelled to Italy with Inigo Jones, introducing the architect to the architecture of the Renaissance and of Classical Antiquity.

Thomas, Earl of Arundel and Inigo Jones
The friendship between Inigo Jones and Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, began with Jones’s court masques, in which Arundel’s wife was a keen participant (there is a surviving drawing by Jones of Lady Arundel in the guise of Atalanta, from a masque of 1609). Jones’s interest in architecture was already evident, however. Even before he went to Italy he was incorporating classical themes into his work, as is evidenced by surviving designs for remodelling St Pauls, and the new Exchange in the Strand. Henry, the gifted Prince of Wales, who had been Arundel’s friend and Jones’s patron, died aged eighteen in 1612. This seems to have prompted both men to travel overseas. Arundel had been to Italy before, and had been enthused by what he saw. In 1613 he and Jones accompanied Princess Elizabeth to her marriage in Heidelberg, and then continued to Venice, where they spent time exploring its palazzi. Jones bought an edition of Palladio’s Quattri Libri as well as a mass of Palladio’s original drawings, acquired from Vincenzo Scamozzi, Palladio’s pupil. From Venice, the two went to Vicenza where they spent a few days, visiting the Villa Rotonda, and eventually to Rome. Jones filled the margins of his copy of Palladio with notes on what he had seen and the two pored over the surviving ruins, spending hours gazing at antique sculpture and inscriptions. Both were repelled by the growing signs of the Baroque, Jones writing that he preferred his architecture to be austere and ordered. It was a second trip to Venice which fully consolidated Jones’s ideas. He was appointed Surveyor of the King’s Works in 1615.

The large piazza outside the entrance has, crouching menacingly on one side, Edward Paolozzi’s great bronze Newton, inspired by William Blake’s image of the same. Surrounding the sunken ‘amphitheatre’ are the eight carved Swedish glacial boulders which make up Antony Gormley’s Planets. The library’s unprepossessing, low exterior of red brick makes the interior a complete surprise: a wonderful white, tall, airy space flooded with light, with broad steps leading up to the reading rooms. In the centre, encased in a tower of bronze and glass reaching up six storeys and with their tooled leather and gold spines visible, are the 60,000 volumes of the King’s Library, presented to the British Museum in 1823 by George IV. On the stairs is a tapestry woven after R.B. Kitaj’s If not, not.