Blog – Page 13 – Gladstone's Library.

18 May 2018

William Ewart Gladstone: From birth to death

19th May 2018, marks the 120th anniversary of William Ewart Gladstone’s death. The use of the word ‘anniversary’ may seem too jolly for such a sombre event; William Gladstone’s life was extraordinary and in this post we shall celebrate it and the man behind the podium.

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18 May 2018

Cal Flyn: Bilberry Woods / May

Over a long day confined to a desk a mind can wander great distances. But bodies need exercise too. To this end, every evening before dinner – or sometimes after – I’ve been stepping into the dappled light for a walk or a jog through the Bilberry Woods, on the edge of the Hawarden Estate.

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1 May 2018

The Irish answer

The items on show in our Display Cabinet this month have been curated by intern Alex Locke. Entitled ‘The Irish Answer’, the display concentrates on William Gladstone and Irish Home Rule, and shows not only the complexity of the issue, but the many different types of printed matter the subject generated. In this blog, Alex gives us more on one of the major political problems of the 19th Century…

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26 April 2018

Your heritage our story: The History of North East Wales in 100 Objects

Gladstone’s Library is proud to have loaned items from its collections to the North East Wales Heritage Forum to contribute to their exhibition at Wrexham Museum. From the Mold cape to the Gop cairn, Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, Welsh bible translations, castles, collieries and six of the ‘Seven Wonders of Wales’, North East Wales has an incredibly rich history which deserves to be celebrated, conserved and promoted.

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24 April 2018

24th April: Genocide Day, Armenia

1.5 million Armenians were killed (1915 – 1923) by the Ottoman Turks in what was the first genocide of the 20th Century. This followed the Armenian massacres of 1894 – 1896 and the Armenian Holocaust at Adana in 1909.

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20 April 2018

World Curlew Day: Books, birds, and St. Beuno

21st April is World Curlew Day, the first annual international event with the aim of raising awareness of the Curlew, one of the most recognisable of wading birds (numenius arquata). According to the RSPB, there are 66,000 breeding pairs in the UK, with 140,000 individual curlews wintering on our shores and estuaries each year.

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19 April 2018

Rachel Malik on Horne’s Guide to Whitby and Dracula

A few of the many things I loved about my stay:

The rook convention outside the library; window sills so wide you can organise your life on them; the giant woodpigeons; the mushroom quiche; that there is a book called The Best Books which Gladstone wrote his name in (some things seemed simpler in the late 19th Century); treacle tart; that I thought a lot, read a lot and wrote quite a lot. That I worked out on the last day my villain’s bad, bad secret. Guilty pleasure: watching both series of The Hour again in the evenings. I love Romola Garai.

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17 April 2018

Preventing what is called ‘the black out of the mind’

Before World War II, when the library was only 30 years old, Alec Vidler, the then Warden of St Deiniol’s Library, was preparing for a ‘decrease in the number of ordinary visitors’, which he called ‘inevitable’ is his 1938 report to the board of trustees.

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11 April 2018

It’s bloomin’ spring!

I’ve recently put together a display of books from our collection to illustrate the arrival of the new season – spring! This got me thinking about the meanings of the spring season itself.

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5 April 2018

Sir William Gladstone, 1925 - 2018

Here at the Library we mourn the death of Sir William Gladstone Bt, great-grandson of our founder, William Ewart Gladstone, and formerly our Chairman of Trustees. We also celebrate the long and fulfilled life of a person who contributed so much to the Library, as well as to his country and his county.

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