The Beauty of Wren Library

This week I visited Wren Library, the historic library of Trinity College in Cambridge, and it's a fascinating little space. A while ago I read R.F. Kuang's Katabasis, and she describes one of the segments of hell that loose souls float through as similar, with booths that they park themselves in to write essays that may, eventually, allow them to progress to hell's next zone. Kuang luxuriates in Cambridge in a very fun way - the novel is set at Cambridge University, and hell mirrors it. The whole world and underworld are Cambridge. So true.

The space does have a wonderful, almost arcane beauty - the tall wooden shelves, the presence of many busts, etc - but what I really love are the desks.

You can really imagine the joy of being a researcher, sitting down at one of these desks, draping your cardigan across the chair, and touching some really old books. It must be immensely distracting to have visitors mulling about and looking at you in your beautiful booth, at your organised and delicious desk, but it must be satisfying to be there - to be the person not just there to look at the spectacle.

There is also the lovely view of the river just outside, with its cascading willows and steady stream of punting boats. The college itself was closed to visitors when I visited, which lead to some confusion, but the Wren Library was open (for only two hours in the middle of the day), and so it felt almost sneaky to be there. They don't want you to be there. You could touch a Shakespeare manuscript, potentially. And that wouldn't be right.

It's an odd sort of space that I felt I should leave quickly. It's too special, and people are doing work there, and one researcher in particular was dressed in the perfect houndstooth blazer outfit befitting a Cambridge student.

It's truly beautiful. I'd like to be the sort of person who is permitted to touch the medieval manuscripts. 
Let me at 'em.