It’s never too late to return a library book – even after five years

Recently there appeared in my inbox an email from that splendid institution, the London Library. Were the following two books still in my safekeeping? it enquired. For now I might renew them online. But at some point in the near future, I must “present them in person at the Circulation Desk so that we can manually renew them”. The books in question, the email reminded me, had been on loan since 2012 and 2014 respectively.

Crikey! Is it really that long? For years I have been writing a book, at a rate that a gastropod might consider sluggish, and those two volumes have been my faithful companions.

One of them is so obscure that I consider it a kind of literary coal-mine canary: if another reader were to request it, it could only mean that he or she had come up with the same idea. Still, it is just as well that the London Library doesn’t operate a system of fines, or I should owe them a fortune.

Most of us who love books would admit to harbouring a shaming library book, innocently borrowed, but never returned and now effectively stolen. The accumulated fine, and the librarian’s pained expression if we were to return the errant volume, are too frightening to contemplate.

But in Australia they have found an elegant way of calling home their wayward library books, using guilt instead of fines. The City of Sydney’s library has begun reminding borrowers that, by failing to return books, they are denying others the chance to read them – and the results have been remarkable.

In the past seven months, 70,000 overdue books have been returned – three times the usual number – including some taken out more than 10 years ago. “It is never too late to hand a book back,” said the head of the New South Wales libraries association. Which, as my bookish coal-mine canary and I celebrate our fifth anniversary, is a consoling reflection.

There are pressing matters up for discussion at the Church of England’s general synod at York, where the motions include: “Welcoming transgender people”, “Food wastage”, and today’s hot topic: mitres.

These are lively times in the C of E, and you might think that the last thing on anyone’s mind would be bishops’ headgear, but the Rev Ian Paul, a member of the Archbishop’s Council, has written a blog post, urging the end of mitres.

In Exodus 28, God gives Moses a detailed specification for Aaron’s priestly vestments, down to the engraved gold plate to be hung from a blue lace on the mitre. It sounds rather lovely, but Mr Paul argues that “the most obvious” reason for ditching a garment that he describes as “not particularly Anglican” is that “mitres are singularly unflattering... On most people they just look daft.”

The Almighty, when specifying His “holy garments” was perhaps not unduly preoccupied with whether the final result would prove flattering. His concern was that Aaron’s vestments should “consecrate him”.

All ceremonial headgear, from military bearskins to Royal crowns, makes its wearers look vaguely daft – an effect that is surely not accidental, but a reminder to wearer and onlookers of the heavy burden of responsibility borne by the humble human beneath the comic lid.