Shakespeare and Gladstone's Library - Four Hundred Years on from the First Folio

21 November 2023

Shakespeare and Gladstone's Library - Four Hundred Years on from the First Folio

Shakespeare and Gladstone’s Library – Four Hundred Years on from the First Folio Picture a November in 1623. Two actors, John Heminges and Henry…
The Book that Wasn't Written by a Writer

10 November 2023

The Book that Wasn't Written by a Writer

Peter Stanley is 90 years old, lives in Boughton, Chester, and is adamant that he is not a writer. Despite that, he has written and self-published a book, KISS: A Meditation on the Art of Wellbeing by Keeping It Simple, a part memoir, part self-help book based on his own life.

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Escaping the pitfalls of 3pm...

23 October 2023

Escaping the pitfalls of 3pm...

“These hours alone, stretched and prepared by all that came before them, seem limber enough to hold new words. At the end of a good day, duration disappears.”

by Jude Piesse

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Vaulted Ceilings and Well-Stocked Stacks

11 September 2023

Vaulted Ceilings and Well-Stocked Stacks

It turns out the ideal, for me at least, isn’t a room of one’s own: it’s a room of one’s own in a residential library and also a desk in said library’s nineteenth-century reading room. A blog by writer Laura Evans

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An alcove of your own with Margarita Gokun Silver

2 June 2023

An alcove of your own with Margarita Gokun Silver

“I came to Gladstone’s Library to finish the first draft of a play (hence the obsessive play reading), and by the end of my stay, I had all ninety-eight pages of it written, typed, and sent out for an initial read to those of my writer friends who don’t mind an occasional typo. I have never in my life been this productive.”

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Gladstone, Geology, and Genesis in the 1880s

2 March 2023

Gladstone, Geology, and Genesis in the 1880s

‘William Ewart Gladstone, not known for a conspicuous interest in geology, nonetheless starred in one of the period’s last prominent squabbles over the scientific accuracy of the Book of Genesis’.

A blog post by archives researcher Dr Richard Fallon (Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow, University of Birmingham) 

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A View from the Audience

13 February 2023

A View from the Audience

Welcome to Gladstone’s Library – a haven of respite in a busy life. Train to Chester, bus to Hawarden, such a warm greeting at the door. By Jill Courtnell 

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Lighting the fire

16 January 2023

Lighting the fire

“Around me scurry other writers, presumably of every discipline, each entirely wrapped in our own private creative fury. Table lamps illuminate every desk, so each warm glow seems to hold a discrete weather system of intense concentration.”

A blog by Writer in Residence Sophie Rickard

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Christmas Letter From the Warden

16 December 2022

Christmas Letter From the Warden

The Christmas Newsletter this year is a chance for me to say thank you to you all for your support and commitment to the Library.

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Ancient English Christmas Carols

7 December 2022

Ancient English Christmas Carols

In this blog we’d like to highlight an item and writer from the collection, Ancient English Christmas carols, 1400-1700, collected by Edith Rickert

(by James, Reading Room Assistant)

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