FAMOUS LIBRARY

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 December 1940, Page 3

FAMOUS LIBRARY

GUARDING RARE BOOKS. LONDON, October 22. In the quiet of St. James’ Square there sits a man who, bombed out of his own home in the suburbs of London, has the harassing job of preserving intact the 500,000 books in the world’s most famous subscription library—the London Library, says the “Sunday Dispatch. .He is Mr. C. J. Purnell, librarian, who has been there for 35 years. He was deputy-librarian when, in the last war, a shell crashed into the building. When he had to leave his own house recently, he and his wife came to live in a flat behind the London Library. Many of the 500,000 books in the library are irreplaceable. About 150 of the rarest have been sent to a safe place. But around the thousands which remain—beautiful, expensive, rare books —the bombs fall nightly. Mr. Purnell now sleeps on the,- premises. Two members of his staff are always on duty in the building. They take it in turns to guard from fire by night the books which they cherish byday. ' - '