Rant: Book thieves

Sarah Watling

BOOK THIEVES There is often an uncomfortable moment when people come into our home for the first time and comment on how many books we have. Or, rather, the uncomfortable moment comes next, when we wait to see if they’ll try to take any.

Why, of all the things people have in their house, is it the books that guests feel are apparently acceptable to be made off with? No one has ever tried to leave with my cushions, or my plants. But I have had a friend stand in front of my shelves and say, ‘Now what can I have?’

The answer is usually an awkward ‘Nothing’. There is always a risk that they won’t come back.

I’m well aware that withholding books is, whichever way you look at it, an ethical failing.

A better person wouldn’t balk at the dissemination of ideas, knowledge and inspiration; they wouldn’t provoke the hurt surprise of avaricious friends.

In the 1930s when the Left Book Club was in its heyday, Sylvia Townsend Warner urged subscribers to lend as widely as possible: here was a crucial part of their political fellowship, she told them; even a means of putting a halt to fascism.

I could hardly argue that we no longer need to halt fascism, and yet I have been known to hide choice hardcovers before visitors arrive.

Researching my own book about the Olivier sisters,

Noble Savages, not long ago, I had a moment of sympathy with the poet Rupert Brooke, whose friend Margery Olivier confessed to having left some books of his on a train. His reaction can be guessed from her reply: ‘You are right. I am not to be trusted and ought to be slain.’

The mishap was all the worse because the borrowed volumes were in fact already borrowed – from the University Library at Cambridge, where the two were students.

As a woman, Margery had less access to the collections; so arguably the real villain of the piece – as is so often the case – was the patriarchy. But, still, borrowers must recognise their responsibilities. SARAH WATLING