In honour of Valentine’s Day, our February display of books from our Biography Collection at Kensington Central Library is a bouquet of the joys and pains of romantic love Continue reading “Love stories from our Biography Collection”
Tag: valentine’s day
Loves of the Famous
In honour of Valentine’s Day, this month’s Biography Store display at Kensington Central Library is on the theme of Loves of the Famous.
Many couples have walked on the world stage as separate individuals in their own right – but what of the more intimate stories of the relationships between them?
How have the relationships between Her Majesty the Queen and Prince Philip, between Bill and Hilary Clinton or between Gilbert and George helped inform the work they do?
What was the experience of the partners inhabiting the shadows behind their more famous significant others – sometimes, as in the case of Alice B. Toklas, made the subject of the other’s art?
Then there are the private passions which became part of the mythology and iconography of some of the biggest Hollywood stars – Burton and Taylor, Bogart and Bacall, Hepburn and Tracy.
Amongst the biographies of the famous which focus on all aspects of their private and public lives are those which concentrate on marriages, affairs and liaisons, sometimes official, sometimes clandestine, and show that the same passions and problems recur in all human love stories.
Some of the most intimate records of relationships are love letters by the famous – though sometimes famous for very different things than their romantic passions (who knew Ramsay Macdonald, the first Labour Prime Minister, was such a one for sweet nothings?
Or that Albert Einstein called his first love “my little everything” and worried constantly that he might have upset her?)
Henry the VIII could be pretty risqué and was not backwards in coming forwards in his letters to Anne Boleyn.
Some of the love letters included are intensely private, and the writers would never have imagined they would be read by anyone other than the addressee. Some have become famous as works of literature and historical testaments in their own right, like Oscar Wilde’s “De Profundis”, his letter written to his former lover Lord Alfred Douglas from Reading Gaol, which shows that the intimate minutiae of feelings come before the retrospective resonance of socially significant moments.
Some – like the correspondence between Abelard and Heloise in the 12th century – are classics of world literature, and prove that whatever the forms of expression used, human emotions are still very recognisable across the centuries.
One of my favourites is one of those many books in the Biography Store Collection which give an intriguing insight into previous times – it’s Royal Love Letters, a collection from 1911. The publisher is none other than Mills and Boon, and it seems not only the content of their books but their presentation has definitely been spiced up in the last 108 years. This is a decorous volume – although maybe the deep purple binding hints at the passionate content – and the illustrations are of various royal personages looking very correct, not a steamy clinch in sight. A list of other available titles doesn’t quite set the pulse racing, and apparently Mills and Boon didn’t only produce romantic titles in the Edwardian era: “Rambles in the Black Forest” and “Nerves and the Nervous” were amongst its non-fiction offerings.
We hope you enjoy our Valentine’s selection of the romances of some of our most celebrated figures.
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Blog post from the North – March 2013
Welcome to our blog post from the north! This month we thought we’d tell you about the exciting things that have been happening at all three of the libraries in the north – Kensal, Notting Hill Gate and North Kensington, libraries.
What’s been happening at North Kensington’s Children’s Library?
This past two months we have had a very busy time in North Kensington Children’s library and it continues to be so.
Saturday 9 February was National Libraries Day. To celebrate this Senior Customer Services Assistant Ishwari Prince led a children’s craft and story session with ‘create your own book’. This involved some origami type folding and cutting to make simple books, which the children filled with their own ideas, pictures and stories. We were all very impressed with the creative and original ideas the children came up with, and everyone enjoyed themselves. Please visit the National Libraries Day website for more information about this day.
Senior Customer Services Assistant, Zvezdana Popovic launched our new after school children’s story and craft Sessions (second Thursday of every month, 4pm to 5pm) on Valentine’s Day with appropriately themed crafts and romantic verse.
We are celebrating Spring Time with a display of books including fact books about animals, urban nature trails and nature guides, festivals such as Easter and Holi and stories for children of all ages. We have lots of picture books and board books about spring animals. For toddlers and babies we have I love rabbits, an interactive touch and feel book full of adorable fluffy rabbits.
My favourite fact books are Wild Town: Wildlife on your doorstep by Mike Dilger and Usborne Spotter’s Guides: Urban Wildlife. You don’t have to visit the countryside or have a garden to enjoy nature. Both of these beautifully illustrated books introduce you to the secret world of wildlife in our cities and towns. They give useful tips on where to spot birds, animals, plants and creepy-crawlies in your local park, alongside rivers and canals and even on your doorstop or under your roof!
Gaynor Lynch
Lending Librarian, North Kensington Library
North Kensington Library’s Chatterbooks club
North Kensington Library’s Chatterbooks club is a reading group for children aged 8 to 12 years. The club members meet on the last Thursday of the month at 4pm in North Kensington Children’s Library. The club gives opportunity for children to share their reading experiences, discuss books, do fun activities including writing stories and poetry, quizzes and word search. New members are welcome, so come and join us! Check out our Chatterbooks page for more information.
Adisa Behmen-Kreso
Senior Customer Services Assistant, North Kensington Library
New story and craft sessions at Notting Hill Gate Library
Notting Hill Gate Library will be holding monthly story and craft sessions on the last Saturday of every month. Come have fun with your children, give them a chance to explore their creativity, meet new friends and better yet it’s free!
The first session will be on Saturday 27 April, 11.30 am to 12.30pm. Hope to see you and your children there!
Ihssan Dhimi
Senior Customer Services Assistant, Notting Hill Gate Library
What’s been happening at Kensal Library?
Come along to hear wonderful stories read by engaging friendly staff at Kensal Library at our storytime sessions every Friday from 11am to 11.30am. One Mum commented that her son and herself thought the staff were ‘amazing’.
We have a new collection of Portuguese and Arabic titles in stock which reflect the needs of our community here in the north of the borough. There’s more information about our this collection on our books in other languages page on our website.
Our first story and craft event was well attended and the children enjoyed the theme. We read a fictional story about sharks and then looked at some non-fiction books and talked about sharks and why people are scared of them and how we can protect endangered species before making some spectacular shark jaws! The next session will be on Saturday 13 April from 3 to 4pm and will be tied in to our Cityread London events.
Natasha Chaoui
Senior Customer Services Assistant, Kensal Library
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A Love Story from Kensington Palace
This is a guest blog post from Sutherland Forsyth from Kensington Palace. We regularly work with staff from the palace on events for adults and children in our libraries.
To celebrate Valentine’s Day Sutherland tells us about one of the greatest love stories in history.
‘My dearest Albert put on my stockings for me. I went in and saw him shave; a great delight for me.’
Queen Victoria, 13 February 1840
Oooh-er – that’s a bit racy! A gentleman running his hand up a lady’s leg, her sneaking in to watch him as he gets ready….can this really be the prim, proper, grand old Queen Victoria – dressed in black with a scowl on her face – with whom we are all so familiar?
The answer is a resounding ‘yes’.
Queen Victoria was always a woman of passion: strong-willed and spirited as a girl, confident in her role as monarch, and loving as a wife to her husband Albert. The relationship between Victoria and Albert was one of history’s great love stories, and it started on the Stone Staircase at Kensington Palace on 18 May, 1836 when her cousin Albert arrived to visit her and her mother. She felt an instant attraction to him, and over the next few years they corresponded regularly.
After marrying in 1840, Victoria and Albert went on to have nine children, 39 grandchildren and over 1,000 other descendants. There was deep affection as well as mutual respect between this royal couple, and when Albert died at the age of 42 from typhoid fever in 1861, it left Victoria devastated, plunging her into a state of mourning which would last until her dying day, over four decades later.
People remain fascinated by Victoria and Albert’s love affair. When I speak to community groups, run projects with them or take them to Kensington Palace as part of my job as an Outreach & Community Involvement Officer at Historic Royal Palaces (the charity which looks after the public side of the palace), it is striking how some of the small details of their story really strike a chord. There may be well over a hundred years separating us from them, but the emotion of their story still resonates today.
Sutherland Forsyth
Sutherland Forsyth is the Outreach & Community Involvement Officer for Adults at Historic Royal Palaces, the independent charity which cares for the State Apartments at Kensington Palace
Find out more…
- Discover this royal love story in a question series of beautiful animated films by Chiara Ambrosio on the Historic Royal Palace’s website.
- If you want to find out more about Victoria’s life you can visit Kensington Palace and see her story told in her own words and through objects which once belonged to her – from her wedding dress to her stockings, her paint set to her jewellery in the Victoria Revealed exhibition.
- Take a look inside Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee scrapbook, created by the Royal Archives as an online resource.
- Kensington Central Library’s biography collection has books about Victoria, Albert and other members of the royal family.
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Valentine’s Day – as reported by the Illustrated London News
I’m sure it couldn’t have escaped anyone’s notice that it’s Valentine’s Day this week. One of our Triborough Reference Librarians, Debby Wale, has been looking at how this day has been covered in the past.
Looking at the month of February, traditionally associated with Valentine’s Day on 14th February, I looked through Kensington Central Reference Library’s holdings of the The Illustrated London News.
The library has copies of the The Illustrated London News from 1842 to 2000. This publication is probably best described by the Encyclopedia Britannica.
A magazine of news and the arts, published in London, a forerunner in the use of various graphic arts. It was founded as a weekly in 1842 by Herbert Ingram, and it became a monthly in 1971. It was London’s first illustrated periodical, the first periodical to make extensive use of woodcuts and engravings and the first to use photographs.
As well as serious news, The Illustrated London News had lighter articles and poems. Today, folk often complain that Valentine’s Day has become over commercialised. Looking back to 1877, we see that there were indeed a large choice of Valentine cards.
This pretty child who seems to be taking counsel from her doll – which shall I choose?
As always, there are Great Expectations from the postman on Valentine’s Day….
The customary sending and receiving of pretty love-tokens becomes the occasion of a little playful excitement among the children, especially the girls below their ‘teens’
In 1868, another rush to the door, to see what the postman brings.
And from The Illustrated London News 11 February 1899.
The ancient festival of St Valentine, of which poor Ophelia sang, has, in recent years, fallen into neglect; but although outward observance of the day may be slight, our Artist seems to be persuaded that, as the old verse has it, “Cupid still calls at a pretty girl’s door”
From the same issue February 1899 – Mardi Gras in Paris, 14 February.
On Mardi Gras (Shrove Tuesday) in Paris the Carnival is at it’s height. Holiday-makers pelt each other with confetti until the street are ankle deep in the paper snow. The police insist that every handful shall be freshly thrown and of one colour, and that no confetti to be picked up.
Paris, of course, being the city for lovers.
The course of true love doesn’t always run smooth, as illustrated in a cartoon from February 13 1886 by S T Dodd.
As the text is too small for you to read, I’ve copied out some of it for you.
Young Smithers invests in an expensive valentine to send to his adored, Miss Jones.
He directs the same, putting his initials in the corner that she may know it’s from him.
Her Maiden Aunt, another Miss Jones, at the same address, takes unto herself the Valentine with rapture.
The day afer, Smithers calls, his adored is cold and distant, her Aunt effusive…
You can guess the rest, but on hearing of her mistake, the Aunt swoons!Smithers explains the situation to his Adored, and the “affair terminates in the usual manner” Miss Matilda Jones becomes Mrs William Smithers.
In an edition from 1900 two take A Spin on Valentine’s Day.
But of course, ultimately, diamonds really are a girl’s best friend. Just in time for Valentines day in February 1905 – The Discovery of the World’s Biggest Diamond, 29 Times Bigger Than the Koh-I-Noor. Discovered at the Premier Mine Johannesburg, weighing 3032 carats, the new diamond is compared with other famous gems.
Speaking of jewels, come along to Kensington Central Reference Library and see The Illustrated London News for yourself – just one of our many treasures!
Debby Wale, Triborough Reference Librarian
Chelsea Reference Library
Further information
- Kensington Central Reference Library has almost the complete holdings of The Illustrated London News in their store.
- The Encyclopedia Britannica can be accessed via our reference and information web page. You’ll need a Kensington and Chelsea library card to access this.
- Westminster City Libraries has electronic access to The Illustrated London News via Westminster City Libraries website. You’ll need at Westminster Libraries card to access this.
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