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Librarians are so much more than custodians of books. They’re in the privileged position of being able to inspire both readers and writers, introduce new ideas, provide safe spaces and warm places and be the door to a community for anyone feeling lonely. Here we’ve invited authors to tell us about what librarians have meant to them…
Author Damian Barr is centenary champion for the National Library of Scotland.
“The right book in the right hand at the right time can change or even save a life. Librarians passed me some of the earliest queer books I read but they also just let me be in the library, they knew I was taking refuge from a difficult home life and protected me from bullies and treated me with respect
and dignity.”
Damian’s latest book The Two Roberts was selected as a Best Fiction Book of 2025 by The Guardian, The Observer, The Herald and the BBC.
Viv Groskop, author of The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons in Russian Literature, feels strongly about librarians.
“The unsung heroines of the literary world. And I use the word ‘heroine’ advisedly as most of the librarians I’ve ever known have been women. I grew up in Bruton, a small town in Somerset with a great local library. In the 1980s the tweedy lady librarian used to keep books back for me and set up a corner with a corduroy beanbag where I could sit and read for hours. I didn’t really understand it at the time but those interactions made me want to be a writer — and write books that another tweedy lady librarian would want to push on someone.”
Anbara Salam, Palestinian-Scottish author of The Salvage, was also inspired by her librarian.
“In my first year of secondary school, my school librarian Mrs Hughes must have taken quiet notice of me burning through books, and pulled me aside to recommended Karen Armstong’s Through the Narrow Gate, which on reflection, is definitely a leftfield choice for an inner-city 11-year-old. This is a memoir about Armstrong’s time in a restrictive convent in the 1960s. Mrs Hughes was a magician for selecting this book for me – it profoundly affected me, and later influenced my second novel, Belladonna, which is set in a silent convent in Italy in the 1950s”
Evie Wyld, author of The Echoes, had just the right librarian at the right time.
“When I was a kid, the librarian at Freshwater Library on the Isle of Wight changed the course of my reading life. She opened the door to Edgar Allan Poe, and the gloriously pulpy Point Horror series. At a time when school reading lists were filled with neat stories of teens navigating divorce, puberty, and new schools – she showed me something far more thrilling: stories that weren’t afraid of the dark.”
Summer England’s librarian literally changed the course of her life.
“I was nine years old, in search of something that would help me escape my life. I went straight to the Librarian with the Pretty Sweaters. I asked her for help; I didn't know how to look for a book. She taught me about how libraries work as she began pulling titles that I might like. Finally, she found Shakespeare's Secret by Elise Broach. That book began my obsession with reading, with classical literature, and with writing. Now, I am a full-time classical actress and author – without her, I don't know where I'd be.”
Summer’s debut book The Impossible Garden of Clara Thorne is out now.
The quotes above were curated by Katie Antoniou who wrote our feature ‘Shelf Appeal’ in our May issue. It’s all about the pioneering librarians who have shaped the history books, and many other books, too.
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