by Amy Sumner | Thursday, 14th November 2019
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.
by Amy Sumner | Tuesday, 05th November 2019
William Gladstone (who lived until he was 88) read 22,000 books in his life. They like telling people this fact when they arrive at the Library, I suppose, because they like to see how their faces contort as they try to do the maths. Let me save you the trouble – it works out at around a book a day, for most of his adult life.
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by Amy Sumner | Tuesday, 22nd October 2019
Introduce a Friend to the Gladstone’s Library family this Christmas and know that you are giving a gift which will make a difference and which will not sit, unused, on the shelf.
by Amy Sumner | Tuesday, 22nd October 2019
We’re saying #ThanksToYou to National Lottery ticket holders with free tea and cake!
by Amy Sumner | Monday, 21st October 2019
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.
by Amy Sumner | Thursday, 17th October 2019
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.
by Amy Sumner | Friday, 11th October 2019
A couple of nights ago, at my Q&A event at the Library, an audience member asked a question along the lines of: If I cared about climate change, why wasn’t I writing political slogans instead of poems? A good question in these times of heightened worry for our world and our environment, and one that I answered briefly at the time, but which I think is very important to address more fully too.
by Amy Sumner | Tuesday, 08th October 2019
Every few years, there is a gathering of a unique set of clans. In the UK, they are called ‘independent libraries’, while in the US they are ‘member libraries’; in Australia, they are ‘mechanics institutes’. All are libraries that make their own way in the world, with small budgets and even smaller staff numbers.