Uninspiring architecture makes British Library treasures a bitter disappointment

It's been 17 years since the British Library moved into its purpose-built facilities next to St. Pancras Station.  I must admit, sheepishly, that I'd never been there.  In my earlier years living in the UK, and as a tourist before that, I regularly strolled around the treasures of its collection.  They were stored in several magnificent rooms to the right of the main entry hall at the British Museum, which was a required stop on any visit to London.  The new building is only a mile north of the old display rooms, but in a part of town I rarely traverse.

With some time on my hands, I decided to make it a priority.  What a crushing disappointment.  A large part of me wishes I'd stayed away, polishing and embellishing my original memories from the British Museum.  No such luck.

The building is a graceless, multi-level sprawl of red brick, evoking the architecture of a 1980s shopping mall.  Where, I wondered, was the John Lewis?  In the front door, the mall feeling continued.  There's a large, sunlit atrium, stepping up in terraces to the only majestic decorative element.  This is the King's Library, where thousands of exquisite, leather-bound tomes gathered by George III are stacked in a tower rising six stories from basement to roof.  Sadly, it's screened from your view from the front door by white concrete columns, and you have to get close to it to even realise it's comprised of real books.  It's a design background rather than a highlight.  Scattered around it, on multiple levels, are cafe tables packed with people meeting and working, fuelled by a restaurant at the back of the atrium.  No august, majestic temple to wisdom here.  It's a giant Starbucks.

The treasures are in a room off to the left.  It's a low ceilinged, darkened room with all the manuscripts in similar glass cases.  I could argue that the austerity of design forces attention onto the manuscripts, thus making them the star of the show.  Sorry.  It didn't work for me.

These treasures are precious relics of English civilisation.  And, given the role English literature has played in the education, entertainment and myth making of the rest of the English-speaking world, they're equally awe inspiring to foreigners.  I found it hard to breathe, the first time I saw them.  The world's only surviving manuscript of Beowulf.  Jaw-dropping illuminated manuscripts like the Lindisfarne Gospels.  Shakespeare first folios.  Handel's Messiah, in his own hand.  Manuscript drafts of great novels by Dickens and Austen.  Just as the relics of saints are elevated and bring on holy awe (even if they're manufactured!) by the setting of the magnificent cathedrals around them, so these treasures once were by the lofty Georgian architecture of the British Museum.

The great libraries of the world are palatial temples to books.  The architecture elevates what they are built to house.  More than words, pictures or notes on a page, awe-inspiring settings remind you that  these documents are the building blocks of human intellect.  They are our culture.  All that is fine and noble, comforting and inspiring, is represented in a core library.  The headquarters of the New York Public Library in Manhattan does this beautifully.  But libraries like Philip II's magnificent example at El Escorial have been doing this for centuries.  And though I prefer the grandeur of classic styles, I believe modern architecture can create the same drama.  The "core" library at Northwestern University, with its stacks of the essential texts in each discipline radiating starburst-like from a hushed, multi-story centre is a wonderful place.  Despite being a blatantly modernistic fantasy of concrete blocks.

Nothing at the British Library celebrates its treasures, or gives them the respect they're due.  They're a forgotten appendage on one side of a bustling cafe, and a bit of wallpaper cutting through its middle.  It was a bitter disappointment.

Admittedly, the building succeeds on other levels.  It's a triumph of efficiency.  In the British Museum years, its functional collections were scattered in buildings all over the country.  Now, they're all together, and people can quickly get what they need.  If you need a place to work or meet people in this part of town, the atmosphere's better than a commercial coffee shop and the prices a bit cheaper; though the free WiFi creeps sluggishly.

But as a showpiece to celebrate the majesty of literature, it no longer works.

You'll find a far more pleasing setting in the building next door, where I had lunch.  St. Pancras Station is on the other end of the architectural spectrum from the Library.  Its facade is bombastic, detail-rich Victorian neo-gothic from the same George Gilbert Scott who designed the Albert Memorial.  It was mouldering and unpopular when the British Library was being designed in shopping mall chic.  Now, it's been renovated and the hotel at its front restored to splendour that reminds you of the Palace of Westminster.

The old Booking Office, a vaulted cathedral of a room between the station platforms and the hotel, is now a trendy restaurant with comfortable leather chairs, an impressively stocked cocktail bar and a bustlingly-efficient staff.  If you like dining in impressive rooms, the Booking Office is one for you.  It's a classic bar and grill menu, with prices about 15% over the average to account for location.

I had  planned for great literature to be the best part of my day.  Instead, it was a hamburger and a glass of wine while catching up with an old friend.  There's the power of architecture for you.

Butterfly in-the-round is a feast for the eyes, less successful on the ears

I'll start with a confession:  I've never liked Madame Butterfly.

I can't bring myself to care about any of the characters.  Pinkerton is a craven, spineless oaf.  Butterfly is a misguided, irritating teenager without common sense or self-worth.  The most interesting character in the whole thing is the American consul, Sharpless, who sees a train wreck coming and tries to avert it … to no avail.  I'd like to see a rewrite with him as the main character.  Or, better yet, with Kate Pinkerton and Cio-Cio San coming to the sisterly understanding that Pinkerton's an ass, conspiring to kill him, and then vowing to work together to raise his son to be a decent human being who knows how to treat women.

I doubt Puccini considered either of those angles, and the operatic world has been satisfied with his original for more than a century.  It's packing the Royal Albert Hall at the moment for one of those "in the round" spectaculars from Raymond Gubbay productions.  Visually, it doesn't disappoint.

Cio-Cio San's house sits in the middle of a Japanese water garden, crossed by irregularly-spaced bridges.  Flowering wisteria and cherry blossoms in pots, lanterns, floating candles, wispy curtains, rock formations and a votive figures add to the atmosphere.  The costumes are lushly traditional, with the women in a spectacular parade of floral silk kimono.  For the second half, the water drains to better reveal the precison-raked gravel and stones of a harsher Zen garden, which is supposed to reflect the dwindling of Cio-Cio San's money and hopes.  I confess I didn't get this until I read it in the programme.  Having read about a malfunction of the waterworks and ensuing flooding early in the run, I mistakenly thought the waterless second act was a technical issue.

With water or without, it's a beautiful production to look at.  Puccini's music … especially in the second half … is lovely, and the orchestra delivered it well.  But the acoustics in the Royal Albert Hall aren't very good, and opera "in-the-round" is challenging at the best of times.  No matter how good the singer, wherever he's projecting his voice, it's not at two-thirds of the audience.  Translating the libretto into English without providing surtitles exacerbated the problem.  I caught a few words out of every hundred, the odd word or phrase coming through in every minute or two of singing.

This means that you lose all of the subtlety of plot, and are left with only the broad-brush overview in the programme.  Worse, you're straining so hard to make out the words that the fight for comprehension overtakes the ability to appreciate the music.  (Only the singers who delivered Sharpless and Goro had the tone and clarity to overcome this trap.)  It was only after I abandoned any attempt to figure out what they were singing, and just accepted the unintelligible voices as a part of the music, that I enjoyed it more.

This, in general, is why I hate opera translated into English.  Keep it in its native language, let me read a translation, and free me from the effort of trying to figure out what's going on.

I was deeply disappointed, because the lavish traditional sets I like are rare these days.  The big opera houses aren't taken seriously unless they put on modern, revisionist interpretations, and the smaller companies generally can't afford them.  Last night's set and costumes on the Royal Opera House stage would have delighted me.  In the echoing cavern of the Albert Hall, it left me wondering seriously if we'd wasted our money.

Certainly, the pre-theatre dinner was as enjoyable as the opera itself … which isn't necessarily a good thing.

We booked in to the Elgar Restaurant, which occupies a big, high-ceilinged space with vast windows on the third floor of the pavilion that juts out from the west side of the hall.   It's musically themed, of course, with a bright red piano on a dais in the centre of the room and big photos of stars who've performed there in the past on the walls.  There's a pleasant, wide-ranging menu I'd categorise as modern posh gastro-pub, starting with a fun cocktail menu of options named after famous tunes.  They're proud of their wood-fired grill and promote it heavily for the mains.

We both started with fish: both my swordfish carpaccio and Piers' home-cured salmon were excellent.  Our shared chateaubriand was OK, but didn't live up to the expectations raised by the waitress' enthusiastic description of the grill.  Bearnaise sauce with a touch too much vinegar didn't help, though the course was elevated by a smashing Malbec and some perfectly cooked green and snow peas that were springtime in a bowl.  Booking here gives you the table for the interval, so we ordered pudding and coffee to have at the break.  Fortunately our seats were on that side of the hall, which is an important consideration when booking here.  Between a relatively short interval and a very big hall, you lose much of your dessert time in transit.

As with any of these in-venue restaurants, you're paying about 20% over the odds for the convenience of location.  At the Royal Albert Hall, where there's a dearth of restaurants in the immediate area, there aren't a lot of other choices.  The meal rounds out a pleasant evening but significantly increases the overall bill.  Especially if you're drinking.  They do at least give you plastic cups into which you can transfer your wine to take back to your seat … a homely touch you won't find at the more formal Royal Opera House.

Bottom line:  I would have given up my go cup for surtitles and better acoustics.  But, failing that, the portable Malbec made the second half more enjoyable.

Two Temple Place is a hidden London gem demanding your attention

The English don't like to admit it, but there's a long and illustrious tradition of American expats settling here and doing traditional English culture better than the natives.  Sadly, it's much more fun to trot out the passport-less, gun-toting stereotype than to remember the cultured, well-travelled citizens who typify those who actually visit and stay here.

Marianne Caton, a granddaughter of a signer of the declaration of Independence, married the 1st Marquis Wellesley; her money and charm carried him though a challenging stint as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and her friendship is reputed to have had a huge positive influence on her brother-in-law, the Duke of Wellington.  We can credit Consuela Vanderbilt with rescuing Blenheim Palace and injecting a burst of fresh attitude into the Marlborough family.  Lawrence Johnston created what's now considered the quintessential English garden at Hidcote.  T.S. Eliot's poems became one London's iconic musicals; he started life in St. Louis.  England's first sitting female MP, Nancy Astor, was born in Virginia.  American expats have been making rich cultural contributions to England for almost as long as there's been an America.

Nancy's father-in-law, William Waldorf Astor, provides one of the richest examples of this tradition, as you can see for yourself until 19 April inside London's Two Temple Place.  This magnificent building is only open to the public for 11 weeks a year, and it's well worth making the effort to get inside.  Even better, admission is free, and the art exhibit on display is just as fascinating as its setting.

Astor moved to England at the age of 43, naturalised as a British subject at 51 and spent the rest of his life here, becoming a peer thanks to his charity work during the first World War.  You're probably familiar with his family estates. At both Hever Castle and Cliveden, he used his vast fortune to gather the finest craftspeople available to create a luxury mash-up of the best of the English decorative past.  Snobs dismiss it as Disney Tudorbethan with some Hollywood stage set Georgian thrown in.  But I love these beautiful crowd-pleasers that show off a magnificent range of craftsmanship.


Two Temple Place was Astor's purpose-built estate office, with an apartment on the top floor for nights when he needed to stay in town.  The location is extraordinary, on Victoria Embankment with a fabulous view of the river between Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridges.  Though a relatively modern building, constructed from scratch near the turn of the 20th century, in architecture and design it's a medieval merchant's palace.  Outside, it's all towers, gothic windows and decorative stonework; indoors, it's a rich mix of woodwork and stained glass complete with a magnificent hammerbeam roofed great hall.

It's worth the effort for the main stair hall alone.  Waldorf was a literary man who loved The Three Musketeers; the carving here includes the main characters as jaunty, magnificently-detailed newel post toppers.  He recalled literature of his native land by commissioning high relief carvings of scenes from Rip Van Winkle, The Last of the Mohicans and The Scarlett Letter around the top of the room.  Elsewhere there are 82 characters from Shakespeare.  You could do a whole semester of English literature here.  Gorgeous stained glass allowed light through the roof. The floor is multi-coloured inlaid marble inspired by St. Mark's cathedral in Venice.

The literary mood continues in other rooms, where you'll find treasures like nine silver-gilt panels depicting women of Arthurian legend, a frieze of 54 notables from literature and history and enormous landscapes created in stained glass filling two massive oriel windows.

The current exhibition is icing on this architectural cake.  Extraordinary Collections from the Industrial Northwest brings together a quirky array of items assembled thanks to the fortunes made by the captains of the industrial revolution.  The late Victorians were cultural omnivores, giving this exhibit something for everyone.  There are illuminated manuscripts, Roman coins, Japanese prints, pinned beetles, taxidermised birds, Tiffany vases, old master watercolours … even a South American mummy.

I may need to get back and wander through again before the exhibit closes.  There's so much here, and it's all so rich in visual detail, that your ability to fully digest what you're seeing dwindles before you're half way through.

The rest of the year, you can only get into Two Temple Place if you're invited to one of the lavish events hosted here.  Or if you're on a film set.  You might have seen it without knowing; this was the venue for the wedding of Downton Abbey's Lady Rose.  Get there soon, or you'll have to wait another year.  Find details here.