In the Rare Books reading room of the British Library. I get an immense thrill on receiving my first Rare Book – a gloriously illustrated first edition of Richard Marsh’s The Beetle – in a protective blue cardboard box. The lid is kept shut by thin lengths of string wound round delicate little cardboard cogs. To open any book preserved in such a way has the air of a childhood Christmas. The resulting thrill, I have to admit, is the closest I’ve come to sexual ecstasy for some time. <\/p>\n
Directly in my line of sight in the desk opposite is a fifty-ish man with a greying beard, glasses on a string, and a slightly mucky jumper. He is consulting some enormous gilded tome. I can’t help being distracted when at one point he suddenly bangs his fist on the desk and says ‘that’s it!’ – albeit in a whisper. <\/p>\n
Recent merchandise acquisitions: a cream-coloured tote bag by The Hidden Cameras, which Anna S thinks is a laundry bag. More bands should market their own laundry bags. Plus a promotional strip of tear-off bookmarks for ‘The History Boys’. Am pleased to find my two favourite Boys, Dominic Cooper’s Dakin and Jamie Parker’s Scripps (who to me resembles a teenage Trevor Howard), are on either side of the same bookmark. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the Rare Books reading room of the British Library. I get an immense thrill on receiving my first Rare Book – a gloriously illustrated first edition of Richard Marsh’s The Beetle – in a protective blue cardboard box. The lid is kept shut by thin lengths of string wound round delicate little cardboard cogs. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}