A New Year's Message from Gladstone's Library

25 February 2021

A New Year's Message from Gladstone's Library

The latest newsletter from the Library’s Warden, Peter Francis.

…
A Christmas Message from Gladstone's Library

27 January 2021

A Christmas Message from Gladstone's Library

Dear Friends,

I am writing this sitting alone in Gladstone’s Library pondering this fading year and wondering what the next year will bring. Will the vaccine give us hope of a return to normality? 

…
A Covid-19 update from the Library's Warden, Peter Francis

3 October 2020

A Covid-19 update from the Library's Warden, Peter Francis

Writing this is like reaching out to friends you haven’t seen in a long time…

…
On Running and Writing by Charlotte Higgins

5 April 2020

On Running and Writing by Charlotte Higgins

I have an antagonistic relationship with “writing tips” – the ones you find on literary blogs or on Twitter or in newspapers (including, on occasion, the one for which I work, the Guardian).

…
From the Archives...do you still send Christmas cards?

13 December 2019

From the Archives...do you still send Christmas cards?

Before the reign of Queen Victoria no one in Britain celebrated Christmas in the way we do today. There were no Christmas crackers, no one had heard of Santa Claus and no Christmas cards were sent. During the reign of Victoria, from 1837 onwards, the wealth of printing inventions and technologies of the industrial revolution meant that the face of Christmas changed forever.

…
In colour: King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra’s visit to Gladstone’s Library

10 December 2019

In colour: King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra’s visit to Gladstone’s Library

Early sepia-drenched photographs of Gladstone’s Library I have seen are curious. They are strange portals into a familiar but unfamiliar world. They can also be a bit like dusty moths, lifeless and flattened in the pages of history. I wanted to (amateurly) try and put a bit of colour in one.

…
Remembering John Moorman

22 November 2019

Remembering John Moorman

John Moorman (1905 – 1989), Bishop of Ripon, was a leading authority on St Francis of Assisi and the history of the Franciscan Order. After his ordination in 1929, he was curate of Holbeck in Leeds before being appointed rector of Fallowfield in Manchester. During the Second World War, staying true to his pacifist beliefs, he worked as a farmhand in Wharfedale quite literally digging for victory. 

…
Switching off at Gladstone’s by Amber Massie-Blomfield

21 October 2019

Switching off at Gladstone’s by Amber Massie-Blomfield

It’s a strange month to be on retreat from reality, these final days of our membership of the EU (or perhaps not), as the clock ticks down to Halloween and all the ghoulish things it harbours.

…
Learning from failure by Emily Morris

20 October 2019

Learning from failure by Emily Morris

Back on a sweltering day in August, I was cycling along the Welsh Road when I heard a thud and a dull skid. I stopped, turned around and saw that one of my overstuffed panniers had fallen off the back of my bike and bounced into the gutter. I wondered if I could hail a black cab, but I wasn’t in Manchester anymore.

…
Self care for writers by Suzannah Evans

17 October 2019

Self care for writers by Suzannah Evans

It is undeniably brilliant to be a Poet in Residence here. Every day I get up and eat breakfast that someone else has cooked, leave the dishes and scuttle off to write in one of the most beautiful, wooden beamed, book-scented libraries I have ever been in. After lunch I take a walk around the village in one direction or another, and then come back to write more or read until dinner time.

…