by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 25th April 2024
"I felt extremely lucky to receive this scholarship because I knew my research would be greatly enhanced by the huge and varied array of resources on offer at the Library, but I was also really looking forward to having an idyllic workspace to study away from all of life’s distractions!" - Hannah Helm
by Rhian Waller | Wednesday, 20th March 2024
History: What it is and isn’t
An article by Dan Kazseta, Writer in Residence in February and March 2024 and author of Toxic.
"History is not simply chronology and stenography, although those are basic building blocks. The uninitiated claim that “you can’t rewrite history” but that is literally not true. History is more than chronology, but even sometimes the chronology is wrong and has to get updated. History is also more than single-perspective accounts..."
by Rhian Waller | Monday, 28th March 2022
I began to reflect on women’s experiences of maternity two hundred years ago: a time when maternal and infant mortality were far higher than today, when women had limited control over how many children they bore, and when difficult births were typically endured with little or no pain relief.
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 25th March 2022
The Anne Ramsden Bennett Archive is the first collection that I have catalogued. It has given me the unique opportunity to learn about cataloguing, and to learn more about the role of women in the publishing industry in the nineteenth century.
by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 10th December 2019
Early sepia-drenched photographs of Gladstone’s Library I have seen are curious. They are strange portals into a familiar but unfamiliar world. They can also be a bit like dusty moths, lifeless and flattened in the pages of history. I wanted to (amateurly) try and put a bit of colour in one.
by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 22nd January 2019
In this regular series, library staff ‘spotlight’ a single item, or a set of items, from the thousands of print and archive items held in the collections here at Gladstone’s Library. Read on and discover more about the items on our shelves…
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by Rhian Waller | Friday, 26th October 2018
Do you know the man behind the building of Gladstone’s Library? Possibly not. His name is John Douglas and he designed, during his life, more than 500 buildings. One of them was St Deiniol's Library, today known as Gladstone’s Library.
by Rhian Waller | Wednesday, 03rd October 2018
Benjamin Disraeli, statesman of the conservative party, novelist, twice-serving Prime Minister and, of course, William Gladstone’s political foe.
by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 25th September 2018
Although not Welsh himself, in 1894 William Ewart Gladstone decided to found his library across the Welsh border for good reason. The beautiful, remote countryside of Hawarden village, as well as nearby historic areas such as Ruthin and Mold, are steeped in culture and Welsh heritage. With an abundance of hills, forests and, of course, castles, as well as the mountain range of Snowdonia, Gladstone envisaged that rather than the congested streets of London, Liverpool or Manchester, North Wales would serve as the perfectly serene backdrop for his incredible legacy as well as provide the necessary air of tranquillity for study and contemplation.
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 06th July 2018
Have you ever wondered what the above symbol is? We use it everywhere - on our website, on our social media, our merchandise, even our business cards – it has, in time, become the symbol for Gladstone’s Library. But what exactly is it a symbol for? Where does it come from and what does it mean?
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 08th June 2018
Upon hearing the phrase Gray’s Anatomy, images may come to mind of the popular American TV series set in a Seattle hospital; however a much different medium bears the origin of this name. Within William Gladstone's own collection there exists a 3rd edition copy of Gray’s Anatomy. Not as some might suspect, a novelised version of the TV series, but rather a complete 'descriptive and surgical' look at anatomy.
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 18th May 2018
19th May 2018, marks the 120th anniversary of William Ewart Gladstone’s death. The use of the word ‘anniversary’ may seem too jolly for such a sombre event; William Gladstone’s life was extraordinary and in this post we shall celebrate it and the man behind the podium.
by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 01st May 2018
The items on show in our Display Cabinet this month have been curated by intern Alex Locke. Entitled ‘The Irish Answer’, the display concentrates on William Gladstone and Irish Home Rule, and shows not only the complexity of the issue, but the many different types of printed matter the subject generated. In this blog, Alex gives us more on one of the major political problems of the 19th Century…
by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 26th April 2018
Gladstone’s Library is proud to have loaned items from its collections to the North East Wales Heritage Forum to contribute to their exhibition at Wrexham Museum. From the Mold cape to the Gop cairn, Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, Welsh bible translations, castles, collieries and six of the ‘Seven Wonders of Wales’, North East Wales has an incredibly rich history which deserves to be celebrated, conserved and promoted.
by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 24th April 2018
1.5 million Armenians were killed (1915 – 1923) by the Ottoman Turks in what was the first genocide of the 20th Century. This followed the Armenian massacres of 1894 - 1896 and the Armenian Holocaust at Adana in 1909.
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 20th April 2018
21st April is World Curlew Day, the first annual international event with the aim of raising awareness of the Curlew, one of the most recognisable of wading birds (numenius arquata). According to the RSPB, there are 66,000 breeding pairs in the UK, with 140,000 individual curlews wintering on our shores and estuaries each year.
by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 17th April 2018
Before World War II, when the library was only 30 years old, Alec Vidler, the then Warden of St Deiniol’s Library, was preparing for a 'decrease in the number of ordinary visitors', which he called 'inevitable' is his 1938 report to the board of trustees.
by Rhian Waller | Wednesday, 11th April 2018
I've recently put together a display of books from our collection to illustrate the arrival of the new season - spring! This got me thinking about the meanings of the spring season itself.
by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 05th April 2018
Here at the Library we mourn the death of Sir William Gladstone Bt, great-grandson of our founder, William Ewart Gladstone, and formerly our Chairman of Trustees. We also celebrate the long and fulfilled life of a person who contributed so much to the Library, as well as to his country and his county.
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 16th March 2018
William Ewart Gladstone, a lifelong student and scholar, is well known as a voracious reader and collector of books: Gladstone built up a remarkable personal library, reflecting the wide range of interests of a true Victorian polymath.
However, Gladstone is perhaps less well known for collecting paintings, sculpture, fine porcelain and ivories.
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 23rd February 2018
In this blog, intern Alex Locke writes about our latest History Room display for the month of March. The display focuses on how our collections at Gladstone's Library – some on display for the first time – can help illustrate one of the most tumultuous events in Western history – the French Revolution. Read on to find out more about how the printed word played a part in this extraordinary event, and how its influence impacted Gladstone's time as much as our own...
by Rhian Waller | Wednesday, 07th February 2018
Gladstone’s Library is delighted to introduce a new blog series entitled ‘From the Archives…’; a regular spotlight on some of the remarkable items we hold within our collections. The series will showcase a selection of our most weird, wonderful, and always fascinating holdings, so be sure to check back regularly for updates!
by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 06th February 2018
On 6th February 1918 the Representation of the People Act was passed which allowed women over the age of 30 who met a property qualification to vote. This gave 8.5 million women the vote (though it is important to note that this only represented 40% of the total population of women in the UK and it wasn’t until ten years later that women achieved full equality in voting rights).
by Rhian Waller | Monday, 05th February 2018
To celebrate International Women’s Day today, our archivist Dawn Ridding draws our attention to her favourite, and less well-known member of the Gladstone family, Catherine Gladstone, wife of Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone for 59 years, until his death in 1898.
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by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 23rd January 2018
St. Dwynwen is Wales’ patron saint of love and Dydd Santes Dwynwen is the Welsh equivalent of St. Valentine’s Day. Dwynwen (meaning ‘she who lives a blessed life’) was a 4th / 5th-century princess and one of King Brychan Brycheiniog’s 24 daughters.
by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 24th October 2017
History is littered with bitter rivalries - Sparta and Athens, Lancaster and York, Tom and Jerry. But in recent centuries few have come close to matching the antagonism and divergence in styles that existed between two of Britain’s most significant leaders of the Victorian period, William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli. And what better way to learn about their rivalry than with the aid of every history student’s favourite source, (mostly because it beats sifting through mountains of unrelated papers), the satirical cartoon.
by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 19th October 2017
I know what you're thinking, the title ‘Class mark K’ is pretty vague, but I just didn’t know how else to describe this magical corner of the Annex, where I lost a good hour of my day because of the sheer number of books that I just wanted to delve into...
by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 24th August 2017
The contents of Mary Drew’s diaries have been something of a surprise to me! But the daughter of a four-times Prime Minister, whom later acquired the position of Private Secretary to William Gladstone, did not hide her love of music. So much so, she wrote reviews about the music she listened to, the orchestras she went to see, and her own public and private performances.
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 23rd June 2017
‘Looked into my papers on Homer: & I am strongly tempted to undertake something…’ wrote Gladstone on 7th July 1855, unaware that that ‘something’ would occupy his thoughts for much of the next three years. What began as a small project to be completed while out of office grew to a three volume work: Homer and the Homeric Age (1858).
by Rhian Waller | Monday, 08th May 2017
A visitor to the Library has just shown me a glass plate made in 1869 to celebrate Gladstone being elected as Prime Minister. It is embossed with the slogan ‘Gladstone for the Million’, which is simply a way of saying ‘for the many’. It is just one of the many commemorative plates, jugs, cups and even chamber pots that were made in honour of Gladstone and offer striking testimony to his popularity.
by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 31st January 2017
1859 saw the publication of many literary works. Charles Dickens, for example, began to publish his journal All The Year Round in which Wilkie Collins’s novel The Woman in White would be serialised in the same year.
by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 13th December 2016
Most people have heard of the poet Christina Rossetti, sister of the Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, but fewer readers may be aware there was another sister, Maria. Fewer still may know that she was also a published author.
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 07th October 2016
Our founder, William Ewart Gladstone, was not the only famous figure connected to Flintshire. Thomas Pennant, a famous polymath, naturalist and traveller of the Eighteenth Century, was born and lived in Flintshire.
by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 17th December 2015
One of the most popular questions we're asked on our Glimpses is ‘did Gladstone live here?’ The answer is no, he didn’t. Sadly, although Gladstone worked so hard to leave his scholarly legacy behind, building his collection from the ground up and helping to design the very shelves within, Gladstone himself never walked through the Hogwarts-like library admiring the wood carving and the silence. That isn’t to say you can't sense his legacy though…
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 24th July 2015
Loyd Grossman takes the chair for our Annual Gladstone Lecture as our multi-talented panel discuss whether the Library currently demonstrates the same enthusiasm for spirituality, literary culture and political discourse as the Grand Old Man himself.
Our panellists answer the question 'Does the Library remain truly ‘Gladstonian’ today?
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 21st June 2013
To accept that our views on historical matters need examination and possibly re-evaluation is certainly a challenge, but a rewarding one. This is exactly what Fergus Nicolls book, Gladstone, Gordon an
by Rhian Waller | Monday, 10th June 2013
Gladstones Library is certainly not short of history books, especially when it comes to the Victorian era. However, history is inevitably the view of the past that someone holds which causes their vie
by Rhian Waller | Monday, 03rd June 2013
The range of subjects Gladstone was interested in never ceases to astonish me. Whilst in Gladstones Library, I recently stumbled upon a little thin book with an unusual cover three horizontal bands
