An illustrated manuscript displayed for the launch of the British Library's interactive online publishing project, Turning The Pages. Photograph: Sean Smith.
I am sat in the British Library reading room, shedding a slight tear in fear that I might not be sat in here for much longer. Intellects are on fire around me, faces crumpled in thought. Keyboards click. Pencils scratch along paper. I am reprimanded for clutching a bottle of water but my schoolgirl humiliation passes into a warm pride that somebody would care so much for books that they would not want even a drop of water to ruin the hallowed pages.
I keep on drinking the clandestine water, for a moment, to replenish my tears of mourning. I could not live without the British Library. It is my sanctuary, my intellectual shelter, a place of enforced discipline. If I try and work at home, alone, I will only go mad as the wind on this winter's day, drowning in unbearable solitude. In fact, so beloved am I of this great institution that this month, I have dragged my life from the north of the country to live only four minutes walk away from the beautiful brick building.
Each day now, in a new kind of clockwork, I frequent the Reading Rooms where a strange calm floods through me as soon as I am settled in my seat, surrounded by other people tap tap tapping away at their laptops, or gazing into space waiting for a bolt of inspiration to light up their screens. Each day, I flick through the collection of newspapers, all spread out on the table, gloriously free. I am warmed by the beautiful piece of art hanging in the foyer. I fritter away money sipping coffee in the café, where I strike up conversation with the strangers sat next to me, or else bump into familiar faces.
But alas, news reveals that cuts might necessitate curtailing some of these privileges, charging folk to enter the hallowed Reading Rooms or indeed getting rid of the national newspaper collection. As a journalist, I devour the newspapers daily, unable to afford buying them all.
I drag my sorrow to the cafe to see what others think: Joseph d'Lacey from London, 22, a History student, says: "I'm so angry. There should be a basic principle that this is a public institution, like the British Museum, that it's provided for free. People have been coming for years and consider it there's. It's like a community."
How wrong is it to make public institutions into private fee-paying entities? I have been able to join the library as a writer and journalist, without paying a penny. Too poor am I for the London Library. And it is just too lonely to work at home.
Dear people responsible for imposing these charges, don't do it, please. It will be the nail in my coffin. I will be out on the streets, forced to frequent Starbucks like I did last year which can only lead directly to clinical depression. And at least a million future books, which need space and solitude in which to grow, will never get written. And at least a trillion ideas, which that might get conjured up within this vital space of intellectual discipline, will never form themselves. The death of the written word and the crippling of our cultural life starts here.
