A library is the waiting room to a thousand different worlds and insights; it is escapism actualised. So, imagine our joy when, for the lady chief justice’s annual press conference, journalists were taken not to the usual dusty office but to the Royal Courts of Justice’s literary archive.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill called it ‘magnificent’, and it truly is. We walked into a smaller section of the library with a curving wrought iron staircase at the back of the room. Obiter spotted a shelf of leather-bound books labelled: Law Society Gazette. We resisted the urge to flick through.
We may have a penchant for the dramatic; upon entering the main room, we gasped. It was sublime. Dark wooden bookshelves lined the walls, a second mezzanine floor featured more of the same, while their shorter counterparts created a corridor of sorts leading us to a beautifully tiled fireplace beneath a grand golden painting. The double-height ceilings gave an air of grandeur to an already splendid room.
The library, the LCJ said, has been in the RCJ since 1882. It was originally an information resource for the bar before becoming a judicial library in 2004.
After the press conference, journalists were allowed to look at some rare volumes on display. We could have stayed for hours. Alas, editors, deadlines and court cases called.
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