The ghost library

Finding Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries has stirred up a vivid memories of the day I passed my interview at the British Library and entered the circular Reading Room. The rustle of pages being turned was punctuated by the dull thud of heavy, leather-bound catalogue books being placed on counters echoing round the pale blue dome...

Inspired by the domed Pantheon in Rome, the Reading Room was closed in 1997 and the Library moved to King's Cross. In 1996, while the new library was being built, workmen heard clanking sounds and a civil servant saw a “weeping man in 18th-century dress,” according to the Sunday Times, May 19, 1996.

The old Reading Room was reopened in 2000 and anyone can walk in now, but it's a like a mausoleum. In the sanitised Great Court where the library stacks used to be there's a carved quote , 'and let thy feet milleniums hence be set in the midst of knowledge" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.