First off, let me say, that The British Library isn’t a tourist-friendly place. You can’t just walk in, look at all of the beautiful books and then leave. To really get the most of the library you need to be prepared to spend pretty much the whole day there. I didn’t know that at the time.
That said it doesn’t stop it from being a beautiful place to spend an afternoon. It is next door to Kings Cross/St.Pancreas intl. Station which makes it easy to get to. There are exhibitions for those of you who like paying to bore yourselves to death, and ping pong tables (complete with paddles and balls) in the courtyard outside for the rest of us.
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There is also the statue of Newton in the courtyard, hunched over and looking more like a tribute to Darwin than anything else. Thanks to a company named Singing Statues he and several other statues in and around London, has been given a voice. If you have the Layar app (or any QR code reader) on your phone you can call him and hear about his marvellous life. It’s a 4 minute long monologue but it’s pretty interesting.
If you do have the time to register You will need two forms of ID (Passport, Drivers licence, Debit/Credit Card will do) to get your British Library ID. If you aren’t actually there to do real research asnd you don’t have any idea what to start with, pack your stuff away in the cloakrooms downstairs and go straight for the maps and rare books. You log in to the online catalogue, fill out the names and the shelfmarks of the books you want on a little form which is then given to the gremlins in the archives downstairs. It takes around an hour for the gremlins to dig up your books/ resources and deliver them to the reading rooms. But there is nothing quite like the smell of a stupidly old map. I mean really…it’s horrible.
TL;DR
You can’t just walk in and read the books, there are hoops to jump through first.
There are ping pong tables outside and a statue that talks.
Kitty says 2/5 Rawrs
joshandkitty 