Joyreading

The cuts imposed by the coalition government have resulted in many local councils planning to cut library resources, and appallingly over 400 local libraries are now threatened with closure. Yesterday was 'Save our Libraries' day with protests and Shhh-ins (!) going on all across the UK. In solidarity we took ourselves off to the British Library, where I felt more than ever what an amazing privilege it is to be able to consult the material there.

This time, I was reading the manuscripts! I called up some of the volumes of the Layard papers - the enormous accumulated correspondence of Sir Austen Henry Layard (1817-94), discoverer of Nineveh and distinguished diplomat in Her Majesty's government. The first letter I looked at was from Henry Cole thanking Layard for the offer to source reproductions of Italian sculpture for the South Kensington Museum; the second was from the Earl of Clarendon offering Layard the position of ambassador to Spain! I think about the third or fourth letter was from Gladstone, another from the designer of the Albert Memorial seeking to ask Layard's opinion - at that time Commissioner of Works - on the monument's orientation! I flicked through these volumes increasingly amazed at the worthies of the Victorian age whose handwriting was passing beneath my gaze... I could have lost myself for hours just dipping in and out of this correspondence which I am sure sheds amazing light on the international political and cultural concerns of the times.

I was looking at these to read the correspondence from Rafael Contreras, the restorer of the Alhambra from 1847 to his death in 1890, which was addressed to Layard between 1870 and 1873 while he was ambassador in Madrid. He was there until 1877 but the letters stop in 1873, I'm not sure why. Though Contreras has been little studied, he has gained the reputation of defacing the monument rather than protecting it, of having an unscientific approach informed by Orientalism. Reading his increasingly plaintive letters, I developed quite a lot of sympathy for him - he was clearly passionate about saving the Alhambra for the nation and about the important discoveries he believed he was making. There aren't many letters and they don't say all that much, but they show the difficulties he was facing in terms of lack of funding for his restorations and the criminal unconcern of the local authorities for the building. It was a difficult time in Spain, with the Carlist insurrections, and he is obviously sorely touched by this - including the imprisonment of some of the Carlistas in the Torre de la Vela. Amazing to see his handwriting and his signature for the first time - which in the earlier letters has a rather pompous flourish, and by the last letters seems rather careworn, spattered with ink splodges.

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After the library, we went to see The Painter, a new play about Turner by Rebecca Lenkiewicz at the Arcola Theatre. They have just moved to a new location and it's a great warehousey kind of space, and it was a nice production, but alas not a great play. It just couldn't decide what it was about - his art? the origin of his genius? his relationships? his mad mother in the attic? We couldn't help comparing it unfavourably with Red. But Toby Jones as Turner was really good, and we'll go and see other things there as it was nicely done.