#1: The Well of Stories
#1: The Well of Stories
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My first real memory of stories is visiting Halliwell Library in Bolton just round the corner from where I lived as a young boy in Rutland Grove.
Literally I walked out my door at number 32 and there was my school Oxford Grove Primary School. A large imposing Victorian building with two floors. Two minutes walk from my school was Halliwell Library. My Mum and Dad brought me up to love stories on TV, radio, the Bolton Evening News and books. Every weekend the library was my oasis of learning.
I would spend every Sunday afternoon immersed in books in the library. The ones I remember being excited by were Tintin, with all their wonderful illustrations by Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé and anything by Enid Blyton particularly Secret Seven and the Famous Five. To read a book is to escape to another world. Now don’t get me wrong I had a blissful childhood in the cobbled stone back streets and playing fields of Bolton, Lancashire. But to discover a book, be engaged by its front cover and then open the pages got me hooked. The power of words and images to connect and inspire. The first edition of the first book by Enid Blyton titled?The Secret Seven, was illustrated by George Brook and published by?Brockhampton Press.?At Seaside Cottage (1947) the first published as a complete short story book was followed by Secret of the Old Mill (1948) – first published in "Secret of the Old Mill".
We had no internet back then and certainly not enough money to buy any book you fancied. So the library was my way of learning, discovering and teaching myself about the world. I read because I loved reading. This was not homework this was homefun to me! Why do we call it homework anyway? Surely that is enough to put children off learning beyond the classroom?
I now live close to Teddington Library and I get the same thrill going into a library as I have always done. Amazon, Audible and the internet are of course great inventions of our time to allow us to read, watch and listen to great stories. The best invention of all is a real book, which you can flick, smell the pages and be absorbed into the illustrations. A library is where you can find books, stories and other worlds you did not know you were looking for.
Support your local library. Can you imagine how dull our high streets would be without them? Of course we could turn them into flats or coffee shops!
Halliwell Library was donated to Bolton by Andrew Carnegie and opened on September 29th, 1910. Can you imagine what the people would have thought about how we live in 2023 after two world wars, man on the moon, the computer and the internet! Here we are in 2023 in what I believe will prove to be an exciting cultural decade. The 2020s will be looked upon as we look at the 1920s, 1960s and 1980s. A time of inspiration, culture, technology and innovation. The answer to what you do next may well be in a book you read at your local library.