There is a well-known photograph of Nigella Lawson’s library in her former home in Belgravia, showing book-crammed floor-to-ceiling shelves, disorderly stacks that have accumulated on the floor, and further accumulations of tomes on the desk at which Nigella is working. It’s faintly chaotic – but there’s an unequivocal elegance. Analysing the image, it’s worth noting the oversized lamp, the vase of tulips, and the pictures waiting to be hung, but it’s the unbridled abundance of reading matter that carries the charm. To which end, we might also look at the late Karl Lagerfeld’s libraries, where he devised a method of horizontal as well as vertical positioning, so as to fit more in. Then there’s Umberto Eco’s – which took over his whole Milan apartment and necessitated reinforced corridors. In 2015, video footage of the writer wandering the rooms was shown at the Venice Biennale, and in 2023 it was incorporated into a documentary film, Umberto Eco: A Library of the World.
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As a society, we’re well versed in the danger of excess, and the simultaneous allure of ‘too much’. ‘More is more and less is a bore,’ was the mantra of fashion icon and interior designer Iris Apfel, while Emma Burns, joint managing director of Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, reckons that a collection of anything can become interesting ‘so long as you have enough to make an impact.’ There’s a captivating tension in the tipping point, proven, perhaps, by the popularity of some of the houses on this site. We delight in Umberto Pasti’s Moroccan abode, brimming with Islamic tiles, antique textiles, and plants – and Ben Pentreath’s admission that he and Charlie McCormack ‘can’t stop buying junk-shop china, and the habit is extremely out of control.’ Annabel Astor has made a shell grotto of her bothy on Jura - and Bridie Hall collects collections, a look she describes as ‘the museum aesthetic.’
But stuff can become a problem - whereas ‘books, and more books, make a home,’ declares Cindy Leveson. Our eye finds appeal in their copious company long after we might have decided to purge our stock of Staffordshire flatbacks or mochaware mugs. We palliate the ‘too many’ by dissipating them throughout a house, encouraged by the great Dorothy Draper who recommended a casual scattering of books as a means of making a room look comfortable, and alive. Beyond that, the untidy variance in size, colour and fonts has decorative worth: ‘rooms need things that one does not have any control over,’ says Rita Konig. And lack of shelves doesn’t have to be a hindrance: in Benedict Foley and Daniel Slowik’s Dedham Vale cottage, stalagmite-like towers are developing on the landing, while in James Mackie’s house in the Cotswolds, the same is happening under tables.
For libraries have romantic connotations and ancient precedence - the earliest known instance, the Royal Library of Ebla (in modern-day Syria) was established almost 5000 years ago – and, whether private or public, a room or a collection, a library is viewed as precious. With this, we’re haunted by the extinguishing of literature: ‘how can we sleep for grief?’ asks Lady Thomasina Coverly in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, of the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides that were lost in the Library of Alexandria. And we condemn the deliberate destruction of books – despite Mikhail Bulgakov’s observation in The Master and The Margarita, written under the pressure of extreme censorship, that in today’s world, ‘manuscripts don’t burn.’
It’s why we struggle, even when we have breached the case-dependent critical mass, to get rid of novels that trace an autobiographical path of our developing passions (looking at my copy of Wuthering Heights I am 14 again, when I would have suffered being Isabella Linton if it meant marrying Heathcliff) and mediums of reference. Besides, book-bare shelves are psychologically disturbing – a genuine phenomenon that affects even non-bibliophiles – and browsing someone else’s shelves can be a quickfire route to a meeting of minds. For ego comes into it, which is one of the many reasons the e-reader has not, as predicted, desecrated the printing press. Books are a physical marker of sophisticated intelligence, and enlightenment is ever in vogue.
Of course, enlightenment implies being familiar with the contents, and here literary habits vary. They might relate to time of day, or place, or concurrent number - Virginia Woolf advocated for having multiple books on the go, stating ‘one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others.’ Notable is that there are some who judge an uncracked spine, but, said Umberto Eco, ‘it is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticise those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read . . . There are things in life that we always need to have plenty of, even if we will only use a small portion,’ – which enables us to identify exactly how it was he ended up having to reinforce his floors. The Japanese, incidentally, have a term for it: tsundoku describes the purchase of piles of books for future enjoyment (and they’re a nation famously associated with a minimal approach to living.) It’s an attitude of optimism – arguably, a stylish stance in our turbulent times.
Even so, the book acquisition often isn’t deliberate. Especially for those of us who think like Eco, they propagate effortlessly, literature being something of a pyramid system, whereupon each tome read inevitably drives the procurement of several more – a situation exacerbated by periods of research. Alongside, there’s pleasure to be found in whiling away hours in second hand bookshops and exploring the books pages in this publication and others – regarding which, Amazon’s buy-now button can be lethal. Some become more specialist in their approach, though it’s unwise to allow valuable first editions to languish in less-ordered systems.
Which takes up back to those libraries mentioned in the introduction. Nigella, prior to acceding to her position as the nation’s favourite domestic goddess, was deputy literary editor at The Sunday Times, so books would have arrived unbidden (which I can tell you, as a fellow reviewer, is a recurrent thrill.) Her collection now also includes thousands of recipe books – and while she has, at times, weeded it (she gave a significant number of volumes to the Spellow Library Hub in Liverpool after it was torched during the 2024 riots) she retains a massive number. Umberto Eco frequented antiquarian bookshops and dealers – he had a particular interest in 15th – 17th century texts – and, after his death, his library was acquired by the Italian Ministry of Culture, on account of being deemed an asset of national heritage. And Karl Lagerfeld, in a potentially cost-saving masterstroke, opened his own bookshop through which he could buy the books he wanted. 7L, at the very end of the rue de Lille in Paris, is intact, and the still crosshatched library there serves as a venue for exhibitions and readings. It’s managed by Chanel – ultimate proof, if any more were needed, of the eternal chicness of too many books.
