Library Review

Murison, W.J.

1975 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012622

IT MAY BE APPROPRIATE to open with a quotation, and who better to pull the curtains than Viscount Eccles who once made a very wise statement If a man has good manners and is not afraid of people, he will get byeven if he is stupid. Ministers did not make encouraging remarks like that when I was young. You will probably agree that if a man is to make any headway in his chosen profession he will need his fair share of opportunities at the right time. There is a strong element of time and chance in our lives, and I have been fortunate.

Hodges, Kenneth

1975 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012623

A LIBRARY that moves towards becoming an information centre mirrors those attempts made in the political sphere to construct a community out of a fragmented reality, rife with escapism. Mircea Eliade, in discussing the myth of the lite, calls the fragmentation which modern, man experiences part of a complex process, the cyclic mythological behaviour characteristic of archaic and traditional societies where Chaos is followed by a new creation.

Collingwood, Frances

1975 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012624

NO TRIBUTE to the gallant R. M. Ballantyne could have been greater than the action of the boys of Harrow School who, upon receiving the news of his death in 1894, spontaneously decided to start a collection so that a monument might be erected to perpetuate his fame. To them, as indeed to so many nineteenthcentury boys, Ballantyne was that admirable man who had provided them with the sort of adventure stories for which they craved.

Cairns, David

1975 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012625

A YEAR OR TWO AGO there came into my hands a manuscript book about Edinburgh in the 1790s written in his old age in 1854 by a certain John Howell. This book, which had been sent by a relative, proved to be of great interest both topographically and as a record of social life, and was eventually secured by the National Library of Scotland. A few months later, the Keeper of Manuscripts in the Library wrote to me again saying that he believed there might be further eighteenthand nineteenthcentury letters and papers in the possession of the former owner of the Howell manuscript, and asking whether she might be willing to allow these to be seen, and possibly acquired, by the Library. The papers turned out to be predominantly family papers, and the central figure in this context was John Brown, M.D., the Edinburgh essayist 181082, the author of three volumes of essays and papers, Horae Subsecivae, the best known of which are perhaps Pet Marjorie and Rab and his Friends.

1975 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012626

AS WE RETREAT ever deeper into ourselves from the chaos around ussecurity chains on each door, I spy peepholes obtained on mail order through Exchange and Mart in the upper panels, antirape courses for women the latest thingit is the mildest of consolations to notice that in the world of the oncesilver screen goodies remain after a fashion goodies and baddies are unalterably the people from the other side of the tracks. This, and perhaps only this, can explain the way local cinema managers held on, week after week in some cases, to The Death Wish, in which Charles Bronson plays the average, if also tougher than average, citizen who turns oneman vigilante to avenge the mugging of his wife and daughter. Bronson is not, of course, at the very best of times the nicest of characters we recall that in The Stone Killers he was the cop who, had he not been a cop, would have been Public Enemy No. 1. He is said to be in boxoffice terms the most profitable actor in the world as Saigon died, his menacing figure looked down even there from the abandoned cinemas. Eye for an eye moralities are neither new nor localized but it is instructive that amidst change so pervasive, such attitudes are with us still.