We are kicking off our celebration of National Library Week with words from Edward Rutherfurd, check back often this week to find out what the library has meant to many of our authors…
From Edward Rutherford Author of Paris
When I was seven, our lending library was a gray stone building that lay just upstream from a ferry operated by a man in a skiff with an outboard motor. Every Thursday evening I’d get a new book there, science-fiction mostly – as we had no television, I read most evenings. When I was eleven, I got flu badly, and my mother borrowed the Hornblower books. By the time I was well, I’d read them all.
I also loved exploring my parents’ books – Rudyard Kipling, Evelyn Waugh, even James Branch Cabell. In the attic, I found my grandfather’s victorian adventure stories, like Ballantyne’s The Coral Island.
Since then, I’ve enjoyed the mighty Cambridge University library, the New York Public Libraries and, as a member, the quirky London Library.
And from all these adventures, I’ve learned two things: storytelling is timeless; and the best discoveries are made in open stacks!