London Lives

London Lives: exploring the nooks and crannies

Research in Westminster

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Now that I’ve been bitten again by the writing bug, it’s good to explore other writing spaces and to research ideas. So this week I joined Westminster Libraries (one of them is a good research library too). Off to lovely Marylebone to  collect my card and explore the facilities. The upstairs has an extensive research collection and study area and I sat for a while reading up on John Dickson Carr and locked room mysteries.

Then I hopped on the bus to Paddington to look in another of the borough’s libraries. All fab again. Both are in lovely old buildings. I shall look in the Charing Cross one and the Westminster Research Library this coming week or at the weekend (although I have an LSE lecture and a friend’s play on Saturday).

This is intriguing, too: Westminster’s Archives Centre is serialising an 1846 diary written by Nathaniel Bryceson, a Victorian clerk in Pimlico. His mother was born in 1797 and Nathaniel himself died in 1911. That’s just two generations crossing a very significant period of time. Incredible. I look forward to reading the entries.

When I left the library in Paddington, the day had become suddenly spring-like.

Gloucester Terrace, London W2

Gloucester Terrace, London W2

Porchester Square, London W2

Porchester Square, London W2


Written by Alex Urban

7 February 2010 at 16:16

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