For years, I have regularly given books to charity shops in north London. I have now found another happy target for donations. It is called a public library.
I had popped into my nearest Islington branch after reading about Birmingham, where a new supersized central library, opened only two years ago at a cost of nearly £200m, was asking the public for new books because of the squeeze on budgets. But it is not just Brum that’s suffering. There are cutbacks all over the country, with quite a few closures — Southampton council approved five last week. One problem is that the culture minister, Ed Vaizey, oversees libraries, but local authorities determine their funding. Now Tim Coates, a former chief executive of Waterstones, has attacked Vaizey for his lack of grip over libraries, adding that in continental Europe they are flourishing.
Many writers, including Kate Atkinson, Ali Smith and the Birmingham-born Jonathan Coe, have lately voiced their concerns (and not, I’m sure, because they gain financially from the Public Lending Right Act). Smith has even decided that her next book will be a series of short stories entitled Public Library and Other Stories — all about libraries or set around them. A sort of bibliophile My Family and Other Animals.
■ One of Nick Penny’s legacies on leaving the National Gallery earlier this month is a damaging dispute with the gallery assistants over outsourcing. It has been simmering for weeks, and has led recently to strikes, which have meant sometimes closing more than half the gallery rooms to stop the public seeing their favourite Velazquez or Vermeer.
A few weeks ago, Penny, much more a curator than a manager, opined that internal staff, who at least knew their Old Masters, should continue as assistants. Then he changed his mind, saying that their positions should be handed over to the private security firm Securitas. Fat lot they know about art.
Advertisement
Penny finally departed last week, handing over this can of worms to Gabriele Finaldi, his successor as director. After long agonising about leaving the Prado, in Madrid, he is landed with this mess. Also new this month is Hannah Rothschild, as chairman of the National Gallery. What a hapless start for the duo.
■ In 1969, a 21-year-old actress called Lynda Bellingham made her professional debut in the Essex resort of Frinton — an appropriately middle-class venue for the Oxo mum from the famous TV advert.
Bellingham died last year after a second career as a writer of novels and memoirs; her last book, about her final illness, was a Sunday Times bestseller. Next Sunday, a gala performance based on her life will be staged at the Frinton Summer Theatre, with a plaque unveiled on the building by her agent, Gordon Wise of Curtis Brown, and a fund announced, to be overseen by her widower, Michael Pattemore, to support performers making their own debuts at Frinton. A generous last act.