The Birthday Present (2008)
The Birthday Present
“They didn't use that term, naturally they didn't, but a worse one I thought was a joke that only came up in TV comedy. The Librarian, who's now called the Director, called me in and said—he actually said and he wasn't smiling—they were going to have to let me go.
It wasn't a total surprise. The Library of British History had been in a bad way for quite a time. We rely on private funding and though we've applied for government grants we're always turned down. I'm going to start saying “they” now..., “we” being inappropriate, so it was “they” who had to sell one of our collections last year and it fetched a lot of money, but not enough. The Director told me they had decided to close a whole floor down and of course it was my floor where the histories of the late medieval period are kept. The collection wouldn't be sold, he said with a kindly smile, as if to comfort me, and actually said that if I ever wanted to look at anything among all that sixteenth-century stuff, there would be no difficulty about “granting me access.”MoreLess
It wasn't a total surprise. The Library of British History had been in a bad way for quite a time. We rely on private funding and though we've applied for government grants we're always turned down. I'm going to start saying “they” now..., “we” being inappropriate, so it was “they” who had to sell one of our collections last year and it fetched a lot of money, but not enough. The Director told me they had decided to close a whole floor down and of course it was my floor where the histories of the late medieval period are kept. The collection wouldn't be sold, he said with a kindly smile, as if to comfort me, and actually said that if I ever wanted to look at anything among all that sixteenth-century stuff, there would be no difficulty about “granting me access.”MoreLess
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