READING THE ROOM

Less than a third of the UK population used a library in the past year. Lydia Spencer-Elliott argues that access to the latest hardbacks is not the only thing these places provide

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It took me four years of living 12 minutes away from Battersea Library to eventually register as a member. Despite its octagonal turret and red brick exterior, the 19th-century building was, embarrassingly, no match for the apps sucking my attention towards my phone – until the start of 2025, when the number of books stacked in piles across my tiny flat began to feel wasteful in terms of both paper and cost.

I was spending £15 a pop on new hardback releases, only to let them gather dust within a matter of months of reading them, with some borrowed once or twice by passing friends. So, with trepidation, I meandered through the open arches to the shelves.

When the first public lending library opened in Manchester in 1852, it was so busy during its first week that a police officer was assigned to conduct crowd control around the overflowing borrowing desk. “This meeting cherishes the earnest hope that the books thus made available will prove a source of pleasure and improvement in the cottages, the garrets, and the cellars of the poorest of our people,” said Oliver Twist authorCharles Dickens at the opening ceremony.

Cut to 2025 and, although 78 per cent of the population are now within a 30-minute walk of a public library, according to the Office for National Statistics, under a third of us used a library service in the last year on record - and of those, 27 per cent were bringing children to borrow books, rather than checking out novels or nonfiction for themselves. More than 180 council-run libraries in the UK have either closed or been handed over to volunteer groups since 2016. Additionally, a third of those remaining have reduced their hours in a bid to survive cutbacks. Simply put, they’re on the ropes.