Friends of the British Library

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Friends of the British Library
Interior of former Friends Room at the British Library[1]

The Friends of the British Library is a registered

charitable organisation in the UK with close links to the British Library. It provides funding in the form of grants
to the British Library in order to allow the Library to acquire new items and collections, procure new equipment and facilities, and produce exhibitions.

Origin

The inaugural meeting of the Friends was held on 12 January 1989 with the objective of "the education of the public by promotion, support, assistance and improvement of the British Library through the activities of a group of Friends".[2] It operates under a written constitution as an unincorporated association and registered charity.

The Friends first President was

British Library Act 1972 as well as being the British Library's first Chairman. He would be President of the Friends from its creation in 1989 until his death in 1999. The first Chairman of the Friends of the British Library was Christopher Henry Beaumont Pease, 2nd Baron Wardington. He became a Vice President in 1994, and President in 1999 – a post he held until his death in 2005.[3]

President and council

The hierarchy of the Friends include a President, several Vice Presidents, a Chairman and deputy, and a council of members.

trustees of the charity for the purposes of charity law
.

Officers and members of the council are elected as required by the Constitution of the membership at each year's

Annual General Meeting
. The current President of the Friends is
Frank Field MP, William Hague MP, Lord Hameed, Lord Jones of Birmingham, Sir Geoffrey Leigh, Penelope Lively, Sir Andrew Motion, Cdr Michael Saunders Watson and Lord Steel of Aikwood.[4]
The Chairman of the Friends in 2013 was Ferdinand Mount,[5] and Deputy Chairman was Graham Allatt.

Acquisitions

The Friends principally fund acquisitions for the British Library's collections that it would not otherwise be able to fund from its own finances.

Such acquisitions have included author Graham Swift's archive, which included manuscripts, notes, revisions and proofs to all eight of his novels including the Booker Prize-winning Last Orders.[6]

Funding has also included a contribution towards the £500,000 required in order to purchase the Ted Hughes archive, a former poet laureate, which included more than 220 files and boxes of manuscripts.[7]

One acquisition was the Macclesfield Alphabet, a collection of 14 different types of alphabet that date from around 1500 AD. The Friends collaborated with the

The Art Fund, members of the British Library and several individual donors in order to enable the British Library to purchase the book.[8]

Dering Roll

Those three charities had previously collaborated, along with Friends of the National Libraries, to purchase the

VAT).[9]

Bust of King George III

In 1998 the Friends purchased

King George III to commemorate the move of the King's Library into the new facility at St. Pancras.[10] The bust was purchased entirely by the Friends for the sum of £25,000. It is currently on public display on the first floor, at the head of the stairs at the main British Library facility in St. Pancras.[11]

Mary Welch

The single largest contribution that the Friends have made towards the British Library was the grant of £130,000 towards a new conservation room as part of a bequest from Mary Welsh. She was a Friends volunteer and conservation enthusiast.[12][13]

Mervyn Peake's archive

The Friends again collaborated with the

Alice Through the Looking-Glass and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.[14]

The archive itself dates from between 1940 and Peake's death in 1968 and includes unpublished material such as correspondence with writers Laurie Lee, Walter de la Mare and C. S. Lewis. It also included the unpublished draft of the sequel to the Gormenghast trilogy, Titus Awakes which was published in 2011 by Vintage Classics to celebrate the centenary of Peake's birth.[14]

Merger

At their AGM on 19 March 2018, the Friends voted in favour of a proposal to merge with the Library's Membership scheme. This went into effect on 1 April 2018.[15]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Become a Friend". The British Library. Archived from the original on 6 August 2016. Retrieved 6 August 2016.
  2. ^ "The Friends of the British Library". Charity Commission for England and Wales. Retrieved June 26, 2022.
  3. ^ "Obituary: Lord Wardington". Independent.co.uk. 12 July 2005. Archived from the original on January 8, 2010. Retrieved 8 September 2009.
  4. ^ a b "Friends of the British Library Annual Report 2006/07" (PDF). Retrieved 2009-09-07.
  5. ^ "Friends of The British Library Newsletter" (PDF). British Library. 2013. Retrieved June 26, 2022.
  6. ^ Sexton, Ed (11 March 2009). "Graham Swift's archive acquired by the British Library". Culture24.co.uk. Archived from the original on March 29, 2009. Retrieved 7 September 2009.
  7. ^ Savage, Mark (15 October 2008). "Library acquires Hughes archives". BBC News. Retrieved 7 September 2009.
  8. ^ Sinclair, Mark (29 July 2009). "Macclesfield Alphabet at the British Library". Creative Review. Archived from the original on 18 January 2011. Retrieved 7 September 2009.
  9. ^ "British Library acquires Dering Roll". National Heritage Memorial Fund. 2 September 2008. Archived from the original on 18 May 2011. Retrieved 8 September 2009.
  10. ^ "British Library Prints & Drawings full record display for shelfmark BLWA 17". Retrieved 14 October 2009. [dead link]
  11. ^ "Biography of Peter Turnerelli". Archived from the original on 15 August 2011. Retrieved 14 October 2009.
  12. ^ "Friends of Libraries Australia - International News". Archived from the original on 2 October 2009. Retrieved 14 October 2009.
  13. ^ "HRH The Princess Royal opens new British Library Centre for Conservation". Archived from the original on 29 October 2009. Retrieved 27 October 2009.
  14. ^ a b Thorpe, Vanessa (4 April 2010). "How the devastation caused by war came to inspire an artist's dark images of Alice". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 7 April 2010.
  15. ^ "FBL website". Retrieved 1 April 2018.

References

External links
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