Dorries backs bid to save our literary crown jewels
HAVING written 17 books herself, it is clear that the literary world is close to her heart.
And Nadine Dorries, the Culture Secretary, was ‘overwhelmed’ yesterday as she examined a collection of manuscripts by Britain’s greatest novelists and poets, hidden for more than a century.
The MP offered her total support to a momentous fundraising effort to save the Honresfield Library from being broken up and sold abroad.
The collection contains a number of handwritten texts by some of the country’s bestknown writers – including Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns and Charlotte Bronte.
The works had been due to go to auction in July until Sotheby’s agreed to halt the sale to enable the charity Friends of the National Libraries (FNL) to raise £15million needed to keep the texts on public display in the UK.
Mrs Dorries said the collection – which includes Sir Walter’s manuscript of Rob Roy and Bronte’s miniature notebooks – were the ‘crown jewels of our literary heritage, capturing the DNA of our island story’ as she emphasised the importance of keeping the works in the public domain.
She said: ‘It’s important everybody from every background has access to this because it will inspire writers of the future, it will inspire kids who think, “Books aren’t for me, writing is not for me,” to see something like that and think, “Wow”.
‘And they’ll get that tingle down their spine, that same buzz when they see it and want to do somenovelist thing themselves. And only if that’s in public ownership will that happen.’
FNL’s ambitious project – the first national arts appeal of its kind – has already raised £7.5million, including £4million of taxpayer money donated by the National Heritage Memorial Fund and more than £116,000 in public donations. And the appeal has also won other highprofile supporters including Stephen Fry, the estate of poet TS Eliot and Prince Charles who backed the FNL campaign in the Daily Mail earlier this week.
Mrs Dorries was shown texts at Sotheby’s in London yesterday, where the collection is currently being kept. She said she felt ‘incredibly privileged’ to see the works written by the all-time greats and admitted that her ‘enthusiasm as a and reader’ was making her ‘tummy flip’. ‘These are the crown jewels of our literary history,’ she said.
If successful in acquiring the collection, FNL intends to split the works between a consortium of institutions across the country including the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford, the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire and the British Library.
The unseen letters and manuscripts can be digitalised to ensure they can be accessed easily by schools and young people everywhere. Mrs Dorries said that it was ‘really important’ the works were ‘absolutely shared across the country’ enabling access to a wide range of people.
She held the manuscript of Burns’s Auld Lang Syne and also said she was astounded by Sir Walter’s skill – Rob Roy was written in one draft with no corrections – as she confessed she has to ‘rewrite a chapter about 12 times’ in her own novels.
⯀ For more information about FNL, including how to donate to the Honresfield Appeal, please visit www.fnl.org.uk
‘The DNA of our island story’