Libraries are community cohesion in action so it’s a pleasure to be writer in residence in the libraries of Royal Greenwich. This whole  borough  loves reading.   As trustee of  World Book Night , patron of The Reader Organization and The Letterbox Club reading is close to my heart.  It’s a life changer. I spoke to Jill Andrews, Acquisition manager at Plumstead library in their wild garden at the back.

When we were being run by the council there were many years where we would have our book budget frozen all of a sudden.  We’ve never had a full years book budget until now. So with GLL we’ve now got lots and lots of new  books

But the national story is of libraries closing down.

We are not closing libraries. All our libraries are staying open including the mobile library.  Also we go to  homes, to the  housebound,  we  deliver books to them. They tell us roughly what sort of things they want and we choose the books  and we take them in. In the libraries you get he children and they’re  all very excited and sometimes you let them stamp their books and it makes them feel important and then you get older people that come in and they just never get a chance their on their own they never get chance to talk to anybody. You find out what sort of books they like and introduce them to other authors

And then I find out what librarians are really like.

I’ve got my own reading group at home with my friends cause my friends don’t read that much so we have a reading group now  and Girl with a Pearl Earing was our last book.   I just feel there’s another world in books. It doesn’t matter how bad your feeling you can just lose yourself. I’d like to share that with everybody.

Photo:  showing aliens “another world in books”  at The mobile library in Royal Greenwich.