The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

This month's column is on royal libraries in honor of (the American) National Library Week. With the important exception of the Prince of Wales, the current royal family is not very bookish. Supposedly Prince Philip has intellectual interests, as did the late Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, but none of them have reputations as serious bibliophiles. While the royal family have several homes, only one royal residence has a library, the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. (This is not to say that there are not books on shelves in other royal residences, or rooms called libraries, but none of them have significant collections.)

Only one British royal has ever been a hard-core bibliophile - King George III. Yes, before he went crazy, he was crazy about books. What started off the collection of the greatest bibliophile to occupy the British throne was that he was the first monarch who needed to buy books. Cromwell had not sold off the royal library as he did the more opulent possessions of Charles I. It was King George II who decided to donate the unorganized royal library in 1757 to the new British Museum (which housed the British Library until only a few years ago). That royal library dated back to the reign of Edward IV in the 1470s, at about the time books began to be printed. In 1823, George IV gave most of George III's collection to the British Museum - over 65,000 books! - so that he could clear out his father's six-room library in Buckingham Palace. Not only was it an incredibly generous gift, as Prince Regent he had allowed the King's librarians to continue spending huge amounts on books even after the King was past caring about his beloved library.

Surprisingly, it was George IV's brother King William IV, who is generally regarded as a philistine, who established the Royal Library at Windsor in the early 1830s to replace the library at Buckingham Palace that had been gutted by George IV. He also hired a new librarian, John Glover. William IV needed to find a place for the books that George VI had kept from their father's collection as well as George IV's own library, some books that had been in other royal residences, and two libraries that had been bequeathed by royal relatives. A three-room library suite was created on the north side of the Upper Ward by the State Apartments. The British Museum sold some old royal books back to the Royal Library during the 19th century. Prince Albert made plans for the reorganization of the library after John Gower died in May 1860; although the Prince died in December 1861, the new Librarian, Bernard Woodward, finished the job.

The Royal Library is easily confused with both the Royal Collection and the Royal Archives. The Royal Library is a division of the Royal Collection, which is a department in the Royal Household. The Royal Collection consists of all of the art and other objects that the Queen has inherited as monarch. It is not her personal property. The Royal Archives, located in the Round Tower at the center of Windsor Castle, holds documents from the reign of George III onward.

The Royal Library - properly the Royal Library and Print Room - holds one of the best collections of drawings in the world. Originally this was because the drawings were bound into volumes in the Royal Bindery and stored on shelves, just like books. When George IV gave away his father's library, he kept the drawings, so they have been a major portion of the collection from the library's founding. The rotating exhibition in the Drawings Gallery at Windsor Castle is called "Treasures From the Royal Library." The exhibit's title highlights how much the fabulous art collection inevitably overshadows the library's books - currently there are six da Vincis, a Michelangelo, and a Raphael on display together.

There are about 72,000 books in the library now. The books are mostly in the subjects of "royal and political biography, natural history, heraldry, genealogy, travel, topography and religion." The Royal Library is more of a rare books and manuscripts library than a working library for the use of the royal family and their staff. Supposedly the royal family borrow books by mail from the London Library, of which the Queen is patron.

Before the appointment of the current Librarian, Lady Roberts (the wife of the Director of the Royal Collection), the Royal Librarians were often not professional librarians, while professional curators were hired for the art collections. (Oliver Everett was given the job as a consolation prize after becoming the first victim of the Princess of Wales' capricious behavior towards her staff in the early 1980s. He had left the Diplomatic Service to be her private secretary.) That may be one reason why the art collection tends to overshadow the books, aside from the fact that the drawings are overall of higher quality than the books.

I got a rare glimpse of the Royal Library in the recent documentary Windsor Castle: A Royal Year. It showed Lady Roberts and her staff preparing exhibits to display for the President of France's visit. Of course that's important, but the Royal Library never seems to be mentioned in connection with books. I hope that when the Prince of Wales comes to the throne he will make more of an effort to make books a vital part of the Royal Collection. The Royal Collection now has a publishing imprint for books about the collection, and a history of royal libraries would be a nice addition, as would facsimile editions of some of the rare books in the collection. Exhibits of rare books from the Royal Collection (the last one was in 1990) would also show that books are a valued part of the collection.