“Watched Dr Who on television. Rubbish, but there’s a young boy in it who is worth looking at; like an Edwardian masher at a Gaiety show, I mentally undress him. I’m sure the BBC would be horrified if they realised that even a science fiction series can be used erotically.”
I need this to happen at some point in my life..
The personal library of Jay Walker. o.oh..ohhh my god!!
Nothing quite prepares you for the culture shock of Jay Walker’s library. You exit the austere parlor of his New England home and pass through a hallway into the bibliographic equivalent of a Disney ride. Stuffed with landmark tomes and eye-grabbing historical objects—on the walls, on tables, standing on the floor—the room occupies about 3,600 square feet on three mazelike levels. Is that a Sputnik? (Yes.) Hey, those books appear to be bound in rubies. (They are.) That edition of Chaucer … is it a Kelmscott? (Natch.) Gee, that chandelier looks like the one in the James Bond flick Die Another Day. (Because it is.) No matter where you turn in this ziggurat, another treasure beckons you—a 1665 Bills of Mortality chronicle of London (you can track plague fatalities by week), the instruction manual for the Saturn V rocket (which launched the Apollo 11 capsule to the moon), a framed napkin from 1943 on which Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined his plan to win World War II. In no time, your mind is stretched like hot taffy.
Above is the El Escorial library in Spain and The Old Library,Handenlingenkamar Tweede Kamar Der Staten, Netherlands. Both of these libraries feature in The most beautiful libraries in the World, a photographic portfolio of the worlds most magnificent libraries. I think it’s safe to say that I need to buy this book!
‘The best library spaces inspire uo to explore, to see connections, to dig deeper, to linger, to learn.’
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