A meaty story

SIR: Jackie Winter’s article about Harrods Library (July issue) reminded me of the year I spent in the Fifties as a junior assistant in the Times Library, situated above the Times Bookshop in Wigmore Street.

As at Harrods, subscribers were served by polite young ladies, some of whom were indeed among the last of the debutantes.

When I arrived, the new card game, Canasta, was on show in the sitting area, graced by a glamorous player, Omar Sharif. Among ‘my’ subscribers were George Cole, resplendent with cigar and astrakhan coat, and Huw Wheldon from the BBC, tall and striking in an almost blue-black Welsh way.

Miss Greenwood ruled the library with great aplomb. When Denise Robins, a writer of romantic fiction, grumbled at the absence of her books on the shelves, Miss Greenwood declared, ‘My dear Miss Robins, they are all in the hands of our readers!’

She could cope with any oddities the library world might throw at her. One eccentric old gentleman, told he would have to pay for the grease-stained books he was trying to return, maintained that the Times Library books were not always in perfect condition. ‘Why, I once found a sausage in a book,’ he blustered.

‘Nonsense!’ snapped Miss Greenwood. ‘It wouldn’t have closed.’

Like Harrods, the Times Library guaranteed to acquire any book a subscriber asked for. Everyone wanted to read Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan; months later, the book was remaindered. It was a business model that could not endure. Sadly, neither could the Times Library. Patricia Robson, Bath, Somerset