I am lucky to be old enough, and to have arrived in London just in time, to have enjoyed the considerable pleasures of the old Reading Room at the British Museum. The circular space at the centre of the Great Court, which attained almost sacred status to the Capital’s writers of yesteryear, was just about the most evocative place one could imagine to read or write. The Victorian desks, low glowing lights, the curved bookshelves lining the perimeter walls and the elegant clerestory windows were all suitably impressive but so was the archaic ticketed entry system which made you feel as much a part of the ancient furniture as the often impenetrable tomes in the room. Pushing open the low gate and entering the hushed arena of that literary sanctum was about as good as it got for me back then and I mourned the closing of the old Reading Room in 1997 like the loss of an old friend. It remains my favourite London space, despite not being open for 17 years.

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