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HIS month’s Mediawatching could only ever start in one place, with the news that hundreds of public
libraries across the UK were part of national commemorations for the Her Majesty The Queen. For CILIP The Queen’s death has special resonance due to her role as Patron and the Royal Charter attached to CILIP’s activities.
As hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of London for The Queen’s Lying in State and State funeral, so too many more were paying their respects through books of condolence. Public libraries became the focus point for many of those who wanted to sign the official books of condolence. And it wasn’t only libraries in this country, as this message from embassy staff in Beirut shows: “If you wish to pay tribute to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the British Embassy in Beirut will open a condolence book for the public at the National Library in Beirut.” The House of Commons Library has also been involved with planning and protocol for the Queen’s death and accession of King Charles III. The report states: “The information in this paper is largely derived from events which followed the Demise of Queen Victoria in January 1901, King Edward VII in May 1910, King George V in January 1936 and King George VI in February 1952. It also draws on the abdication of King Edward VIII in December 1936. It is not intended as a comprehensive guide to what will always occur following a Demise and chiefly describes what has happened in the past.”
The full report can be found at https://bit. ly/3QQuXUN.
The Royal Collections Trust (
www.rct.uk) maintains the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, alongside other royal galleries. The Royal Library was established in the 1830s by King William IV. In 1860 Prince Albert worked with Royal Librarian Bernard Woodward to arrange its contents into themed subject areas. The Royal Archive was formally established in 1914 by King George V, creating the Royal Library and Archive. In 1957 the Queen formally presented the Royal Music Library to the Nations. The library collections includes copy of Shakespeare’s Second Folio, annotated
September 2022
Charles delivering the Queen’s Speech on behalf of his mother at the State Opening of Parliament, May 2022. Picture © House of Lords 2022. Photograph by Annabel Moeller CC BY-SA 2.0
by Charles I and George III. Charles I read the folio while imprisoned at Windsor Castle before his execution in 1649, and it includes the words “Dum Spiro Spero”, which translates as “while I breathe, I hope”.
There are also a series of miniature hand written books created by authors including Vita Sackville-West, Arthur Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling. The books were part of a tiny library in Queen Mary’s Dolls House. The Royal Collections Trust released a video tribute to the Queen, using family photographs and it can be viewed at
https://vimeo.com/747784308. Elsewhere the Oxford Mail reports that a poem by children’s poet Juli Frances Taylor has been in high demand with “a number of schools, including Bampton, Carterton and St Joseph’s Carterton, and libraries have asked to display the poem which is illustrated by Swindon-based Steve Antony.”
The poem, Riding on a Rainbow, was written for her own daughter as Juli explains to the Oxford Mail (https://bit. ly/3SbSQr5), saying: “I wanted to write something about bereavement. My daughter was very young when both my parents died and I found when children ask about death as long as you give a satisfactory answer it’s fine.” She adds that: “I had just finished it and was tweaking it when the news of the Queen’s death broke. And I thought, this is so odd. And then I saw
the rainbow over Windsor Castle and I just thought this has to be about the Queen, and I changed a few words and included things like magic and pot of gold.”
Finally for this month, we look back at a visit to the Folger Shakespeare Library, carried out by King Charles III and the Queen Consort, in 2015 when they were still the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall. The Folger Shakespeare Library is the largest collection of First Folios, and Charles and Camilla were guests during a visit to the US. The library’s website carries an interview with Georgianna Ziegler, Louis B. Thalheimer Associate Librarian and Head of Reference Emerita at the library (
https://bit.ly/3RL5hKu). She recalls including books with royal connections, saying: “The Prince Charles day was fun. We had chosen a group of books, and we had them all lined up along tables in the Old Reading Room, things like Henry VIII’s copy of Cicero. That’s the book he had as a boy, in which he wrote, ‘This book is mine, Prince Henry.’ “We had the First Folio, and a copy of the arrival and entertainments for Marie de Médicis [the French queen mother, and Charles I’s mother- in-law], when she came to visit Charles I and Henrietta Maria. That belonged to Cardinal Mazarin.” IP
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