Famous British Librarians

At the TLS, John Shakespeare has a rather wonderful piece about the interview he did with Philip Larkin as a young man. (The moral of the tale is clearly that one should not give the subject of one's profiles the opportunity to review the text of the piece!) Here's a funny bit:

"I hate work. Libraries are a quite pleasant way of earning a living. Dismal prospects though! Jobs connected with books like publishing are not good for creative writing. That’s why libraries, all technical and administration, are so good."

He added wistfully: “It’s too late to change now”, and, only half in jest:

"I’d like to have been a solid, uncomplicated, second-rate novelist producing a novel a year. And not 'Crouch in the fo’c’sle, stubbly with goodness'. My only ambition now is to write more, to write better and to live without working, which is immensely distasteful to me. I’d like to earn enough to retire on from football pools, which I do every autumn."

I asked him if that really was his only ambition. His answer was that, as he had spent most of his life in bedsitting rooms and was still in one (“the only life I have known”), he would also like to achieve his two private symbols of luxury, “my own lavatory and a daily copy of The Times”.