Why we back fight to save our libraries

The Daily Express is running a crusade to keep local libraries open. Here, our columnists and writers argue they are vitally important for us all

VANESSA FELTZ Radio presenter Nineteen sixtynine. I was seven and fizzing with excitement. A winding bus ride all on my own along bucolic Totteridge Lane aboard the 251, a bus so rarely espied it had acquired the mystique of the Loch Ness monster, was thrilling. A meander to the library’s children’s section at my own sweet pace, utterly heavenly.

I devoured my weekly swag of six books so voraciously my mother used to hide and ration them so they’d last more than the first few hours. Anne of Green Gables, What Katy Did, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Little Women all erupted into my consciousness free and gratis.

I worked there in the holidays, joyfully rubber stamping and ticketing in sepulchral silence. Ten years later I went on to read English Literature at Trinity College, Cambridge. I couldn’t have done it without the library.

ANN WIDDECOMBE Politician and author My first memory of a library was the one in Boots. In the 1950s and 1960s Boots the chemist supplied a library in its bigger branches and you could be either a red label member or a green one. I used to nip in after school and borrow books, three at a time, the maximum for green members! Of course the public library had a much bigger selection and I learned to use the reference section. These days you just Google any query but then you went to the library.

Today Kindle and Google bring libraries into your home but there is something exciting about selecting a real book, enjoying it and then exhausting all the others by the same author. At primary school we used to go the library once a week and that may be all the contact with books that some children have. Losing the library will take away that precious opportunity.

Libraries have modernised and now offer the use of computers, again fulfilling a need because technology is not yet fully ubiquitous and people such as job hunters need access to it. Libraries offer fun and help. Long may they be with us.

FERGUS KELLY Express columnist I read every day, and can’t imagine not having a book on the go. If I don’t have one to read while travelling by train, for instance, I feel much the same way as I do when I realise I’ve left my mobile phone at home. A bit lost.

And for that I have my parents to thank. They introduced me early on to the library at our local village hall. My mum used to drop in there every week – Dorothy L Sayers, Josephine Tey, and Margery Allingham were among her favourites – and I began going along with her. I seem to recall that it was from there I first read Express columnist Frederick Forsyth’s Day Of The Jackal, and I devoured the horror stories of James Herbert, such as The Rats and The Fog, rather to my parents’ chagrin, as I suspect they had hoped I would develop more high-minded reading habits.

Today, I’m afraid I’m as guilty as many of us of buying lots of books online. I’ve become the sort of person who bemoans the closure of libraries, and happily signs petitions to keep them open, while rarely visiting the local one in my east Yorkshire town. But, rather like high street public conveniences, libraries are a sign of a civilised society and we would be poorer without them. And funding our libraries would cost a fraction of some of the vast sums wasted by central government. HS2 springs immediately to mind…

JAN ETHERINGTON Comedy writer I spent a lot of time in the library, when I was at school, entirely because the boy I had a crush on did his homework there. When he broke my heart and moved away, the library was a place of solace, where I read Jane Austen and gazed at his empty chair, in silent contemplation.

Libraries are the last quiet places in our noisy world, where the only sound you’re likely to hear is “Ssshhh!” Some say we no longer need them, because we can Google everything we need to know and download ebooks. But libraries have not only moved with the times but anticipated future needs. My local library, in Halesworth, Suffolk is a thriving, community hub, with drop-in professional advice on everything from mental health to local councillors, arts events and children’s clubs, lectures, reading groups, writing classes, free wifi, greetings cards, CDs, DVDs, jewellery, accessories and gifts made locally. Just moved into the area? Need some advice? Want somewhere to meet friends? Walk through the door and the welcome will be as warm and comforting as the hot chocolate in the “board games” café. When so much communication is done “online” and loneliness is an epidemic, we need the human contact offered by our local libraries. Did I mention that they also have lots of very good books?

BEN BORLAND Political commentator You would never find Lenzie Library unless you knew where to look, as it is tucked away in residential streets between the train station and a children’s play park. However, anyone who is lucky enough to stumble upon this hidden gem – as I did, when I first moved to this commuter village near Glasgow a decade ago – is in for a real treat. On days off work I would often walk to the library with my two children after picking them up from school or nursery, where for a precious half hour they would sit engrossed in the books on offer.

Apart from resolving the occasional squabble, I would then be free to browse the tiny library’s crammed shelves for the latest Michael Connelly or a non-fiction work that caught my eye.

The beauty of having a small library on our doorstep was that we could walk to it on the way to the shops or the park.

RICHARD AND JUDY TV presenters Judy: One of my most vivid memories of childhood is walking hand-in-hand with my father to Withington Library in Manchester every Saturday to return our borrowed books and take out fresh ones.

There is absolutely no doubt that the library – and my father’s enthusiasm for everything it represented; knowledge, mental stimulation, fun – fostered the love of books that would become one of the defining features of my life. Daphne du Maurier; the Brontes; Dickens… all would slake my growing thirst for words, stories, and adventures. I sincerely doubt if I would have later made it to university (Bristol, to study English and Drama) had it not been for Withington, let alone a future career as a novelist in my own right and the pure joy of running a national book club.

Richard: One of my strongest recollections of Romford Library – just a five-minute bus ride from our house – was the unique aroma that greeted you as you walked in through its revolving doors. No bookshop had the distinctive bouquet of that public library. Hard to define, but something to do with old leather, musty, dry paper, wood-polish and the warm smell of humanity. I also remember the sound of Romford Library – no raised voices or general bustling, just rustling and sotto voce murmurs drifting through the air like invisible smoke from between high bookshelves with their beautifully-burnished carved cornices. All that, plus a cornucopia of books… a visit to Romford Library was like entering a dream-world. Save our dreams.