Library's silent majority
Sir: In his letter disputing Paul Barker's account of the London Library's recent AGM (17 November), Richard Davenport-Hines repeats the slur he made at the meeting, that members who object to the near-doubling of fees are a bunch of middle-class scroungers who have been abusing the library's generosity for years. This doesn't add up. The average member takes out ten books a year, most of which could be bought more cheaply on Amazon. The truth is that the London Library is itself supported by a silent, sizeable minority, some of whom go for years without taking out any books but keep up their subscriptions out of a desire to support a wonderful institution.
If the library is a charity, who are its beneficiaries? Davenport-Hines suggests that only the rich deserve to belong. Meanwhile, like the Trustees, he scrupulously ignores the elephant in the corner of the reading room, the library's overambitious expansion into Mason's Yard which has already swallowed several million pounds' worth of endowment, and for which architects Haworth Tompkins have commissioned toilet blocks from Turner Prize-winner Martin Creed — apparently a worthier recipient of the library's charity than the shabby literati for whom it was created.
Laura Gascoigne London NW3
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