A Letter from Gladstone's Library

Tom Hodgkinson enjoys some institutional idling in this wonderful neo-Gothic building

This week I write to you from Gladstone’s Library in Hawarden, North Wales, Britain’s only residential library. I’m staying here for a few days with my teenage son. It’s a study break. He’s in his A-level year, and the idea is to get him away from phones and other distractions so he can get some serious revision done.

Staying here is also a treat for me. Read, write and edit in the morning. A nap after lunch followed by some more reading. Then beer by the fire while sitting back in a leather chair in the stately home style sitting room, and a game of chess, followed by dinner in the café.

The idea for a residential library was conceived by the great Victorian statesman William Gladstone, twice prime minister, who lived in the big house next door, and the nucleus of the library is the enormous collection of theological books – 32,000 – that the liberal pioneer and fervent Christian built up during his life.

Who knew there were some many thousands of books about church history? From where I’m sitting, at a wooden table with a reading light in an alcove in the gallery, I can see the following titles: The Church in Pre-Reformation Society, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from Bogomil to Hus, The Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople and David Livingstone: Letters and Documents, which consists of letters written by the missionary from Africa back home in the mid 19th century.

Gladstone’s idea was to create a place where clergy could come and retreat, and study, and while the library still has a decidedly ecclesiastical vibe – you will see female vicars with dog collars and leather jackets at breakfast; gloomy paintings of Russian Orthodox priests loom over you – anyone is welcome to stay here. It opened in 1902, four years after Gladstone’s death.

There’s an energetic new warden, Rev Dr Andrea Russell, who joined last year and who replaces the previous warden, the avuncular and faintly headmasterly Peter Francis. (When I talked to him, I had to avoid an instinct to straighten a non-existent tie and call him “sir”.) And actually, when I showed a friend a picture of the austere neo-Gothic exterior, he quipped: “If you liked school, you’ll love Gladstone’s Library.”

Well, I did like school, and I feel comfortable being in an institution, at least for a few days. You don’t have to worry about domestic stuff, for one thing. And paradoxically, the hush, the routine (breakfast 8-9.30, lunch 1-2pm, dinner 6.30-7.15pm) and the sense of being cooped up in a boarding school are somehow liberating.

And yes, you can get a lot of work done. When we bumped into Andrea the warden in the corridor, she asked my son how he was getting on. “It’s actually magical,” he replied. “I’ve done so much revision.” (That was considerably more syllables than he’d uttered to me over the past few days so I was happy.)

The library has its own literary festival, hosts talks and courses, and runs a “writer-in-residence” scheme. Sarah Perry, famously, researched her novel The Essex Serpent here.

The big house next door is now the residence of Gladstone’s ever-cheerful great-grandson, Charlie Gladstone. He and his wife Caroline hold festivals and weekend events on the land there, in the shadow of a crumbling medieval castle, under the banner of their company, The Good Life Society, and we at the Idler have been very happy to have been involved with some of these over the years. I’m talking at one in May this year.

The Gladstones’ events share something with what we try to do at the Idler: teach philosophy, husbandry and merriment and bring some fun and reflection into life and, like the library, are in happy concord with the species of gentle liberalism that William Gladstone invented (even if he did have a bit of a weird thing about saving prostitutes, but that’s another story).

PS: We’ve taken a break from “A Drink with the Idler” this week, as it was half-term. We’ll be back next week with neuroscientist Anil Seth. Also coming up are Carlo Rovelli and pop legend Lawrence. Read more here.

SELECTED COMMENTS

These comments were mailed to us after an earlier version of this piece was sent out as a newsletter. We like to publish a selection and reserve the right to edit them for clarity. Feel free to drop us a line with your thoughts.

Sir: Thank you Tom for this very welcome piece of positive publicity for our excellent library. I don’t want to be too pernickety – and I certainly wouldn’t call the piece “error strewn” – but there are a couple of minor things and one major thing, that are inaccurate. First the small ones; I am Gladstone’s great, great grandson and secondly, you’re speaking at our Summer Camp in July, not May. But mainly that Gladstone was PM four times and not two; this is important because he was Britain’s longest serving PM. I mean, come on Tom! The “Russian Orthodox priests” painting is interesting. In fact he is Armenian and this is one of many interesting things about Gladstone’s later life; he was a significant champion of the Armenians, standing up for them during the Ottoman atrocities during the Hamidian Massacres. The Armenians sent three delegations to his home (now my home) in an attempt to encourage him to come out of retirement and on the third visit they succeeded and he intervened on their behalf to great effect. Gladstone died not long after this and before he was moved to Westminster Abbey for his state burial he lay at home draped in the Armenian flag. We – both as a family and a Library – have an ongoing and powerful relationship with Armenia, which is a wonderful, important, but small country. Many people haven’t even heard of Armenia, and it rarely makes the news in the UK, which is a shame. Often when I talk about it, which I do quite a lot, people know of it because the Kardashians are Armenian. Anyway, we take our relationship with this wonderful country very seriously and that’s why that “gloomy” painting hangs there.
Keep up the amazing work.
Charles Gladstone

Our January/February issue is available in bookshops as well as Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, WHSmiths, Booth’s and Easons.