Literature is a part of the DNA of culture, from Shakespeare to Chaucer.
From Romantic poets, who offered a new way of looking at the world, to novelists like J.R.R. Our writers are our greatest cultural treasures as well as our most influential exports. J.K. Rowling or Tolkien gave us new worlds to explore.
Our lives and minds are greatly enriched by the writings of our writers from all over the world, across the centuries: from Dickens the great 19th-century novelist, to Ted Hughes the poet, and current generations like Zadie Smith and Simon Armitage, our Poet Laureate.
It is impossible to imagine how our cultural life would look without them.
Prince Charles reads to Borrowdale Primary school pupils, Cumbria, in order to officially open its nursery room.
I am a patron of the Friends of the National Libraries and recognize the importance of their noble campaign to keep some of the most important manuscripts associated our greatest authors in the country, rather than being scattered abroad.
Just like the sketches and drawings of great painters provide the code for understanding the creative process, so too are the manuscripts that writers have to offer the key to understanding how they came to be able to write the words that now form part our collective memory.
The Honresfield Library, a hidden treasure trove of 19th century literature, is in this category. Now that its contents have been made available for sale, the Friends of the National Libraries insist that these manuscripts be kept in the country they were formed and whose culture they grew into.
The jewels in this collection are the manuscripts of Sir Walter Scott with The Lay of the Last Minstrel, together with poems by Robert Burns in his own hand – containing some of his earliest recorded literary works known as the First Commonplace Book – and, of course, the notebooks of Charlotte Bronte.
Anyone who has been moved by the words these extraordinary artists have experienced, will find the idea of reading these manuscripts thrilling beyond words.
The idea of them being lost is also too terrible to contemplate.
To support the Friends of the National Libraries’ valuable mission of conserving, preserving, and presenting manuscripts and books from the Middle Ages through the early 21st centuries to scholars, schools, and the general public, I became a patron.
This is a very personal endeavor that I consider to be a very important national effort.
Charlotte Bronte’s small booklet worth approximately £600,000 with the Walter Scott manuscripts beneath, also worth around £1million
Thought to have been lost for a century, the Honresfield Library is a unique treasury of cornerstones of British culture
I can so well remember being read to as a child – particularly being captivated by my father reading Longfellow’s Hiawatha, with its haunting rhythm and evocative images – and was blessed to grow up surrounded by books in the Royal Library at Windsor which, as I grew older, became an endless source of fascination and inspiration.
C.S. Lewis reputedly said ‘we read to know we’re not alone’, and who could wish for better companions than the writers whose wisdom, insight and vision are always readily at hand.
The campaign to raise £15million to buy this collection is one which benefits the whole United Kingdom, as the Friends have brought together a consortium of libraries from Leeds, Edinburgh, Hampshire, London and beyond.
The collection will be shared among all the libraries in the north and south when it is purchased.
I know that I share a love for literature with so many people here in the country. It is a part of our collective and personal histories.
Literature has helped us become who we are by giving us words to describe our human experience, in all its complexity.
We have the opportunity to save these valuable manuscripts for the general public and ensure that these works of genius are preserved in the country where they were created.