Oh What A Time... - #199 Amazing Libraries and Huge Readers (Part 2)

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!This week on the show we’re looking at the greatest book collections history has to offer as well as the historical figures who themselves loved to read. We have for you this week; Maximilien Robespierre and what he had on his shelf, William Gladstone’s library in North Wales and finally, one of the greatest actors of the 20th century, Richard Burton and his literary obsessions.Elsewhere, before the internet the source of all knowledge in the James’ household was Elis’ dad. If you’ve got anything to offer on how knowledge has changed or lizard-dinosaurs, do get in touch: [e-mail] if you want more Oh What A Time and both parts at once, you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh Water Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free. Plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the O Watertime Group chat. Plus if you become an O Watertime All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate

where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O Watertime. Hello and welcome to Part 2. of libraries. Let's get on with the show. Now on this episode all about libraries, I'm going to tell you lovely, lovely, lovely boys, all about the reading habits

and the great library of William Gladstone. This is a man, I didn't realize it was this many times, I'm sure I should have known this, who served four times as Britain's prime minister. Yeah, yeah. Really? Is that the most? Which is the most of any British prime minister. Never realised it was that many. Him and Israeli sort of,

sewn up in the late 19th century. Absolutely. And this repeat Prime Minister was a lover of books as well. So much so that there is only one Prime Minister's Library in the United Kingdom, which is basically a facility bit like the Presidential Libraries in the USA. And that is Gladstone's Library, Ellis, where is it? In Ardenne, in North Wales. Correct, there you go.

And why is it there for an extra point? Well, that is constituency. It's his former home. Yeah, yeah. So how much do you know about Gladstone? I don't really know loads about him, other than the fact that he'd been Prime Minister a few times, but that was basically it.

How much do you know about him? Yeah, a little bit. He was Prime Minister when he was very old, wasn't he? Yes. Yeah, I'm just looking at pictures of him. Every single one he looks ancient. Yeah, I've never, I don't think I've ever seen a picture of him. Well, there probably aren't pictures of him as a young man,

obviously because he was born, you know, he would have been born in the... At the student union, you say, you've never seen a young picture of him on a stag do or whatever. Oh, 1809 he was born, yes, there's going to be no photos of him. He was a scouser, which always makes me laugh. You can't call William Gladstone a scouser. He was always down, always in the cop. You know you mentioned the Gladstone Library. Do you think, is there much of a tourism industry around Gladstone?

Did people make that journey? Izzy was going to go on like a girl's weekend to Gladstone's library in Harding in North Wales. I'm not sure if it ever happened. A hendoo to Gladstone world. It wasn't like a hendoo, but it was certainly... That sounds a bit like she's making it up in a panic. Yeah.

That she's actually having an affair. And you say, where are you off to, Izzy? And she goes, I'm off to William Gladstone's Library in North Wales. It's a hen we. Hendy. Hend. Great, great, great, great. Who's that man out there in the BMW in the soft top?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a library. He is a big fan of Glantstone. And I'm going there to discuss Gladstone with him. So, Chris says you may not be able to call him a Scalcer. Well, he is from Liverpool. But what you can call him is. is a fascinating figure, partly because he's one of the most dominant political figures in Britain

in the 19th century, but also because of how much his outlook constantly shifted. I don't if you're aware of this. For example, he shifted politically from Tory to liberal. He also shifted from high Anglican to devoted ally of the non-conformist liberal tradition. He also shifted from patriotic Britain to fervent advocate of the Irish home rule and an ally of the Welsh and Scottish nationalism. He's constantly shifting his views. Do you think you'd like that in your politician? Or do you want one you can set your watch to?

What's your feeling on that? Well, you were still a politician as a very old man. Yes. So I suppose you're at your, if you've still got the same opinions at 80 that you had when you were 20, I think that's worse. It's a very good point. I quite like a politician who goes, do you know what, I've thought about this and I've changed my mind?

Do you don't get a lot of that these days? No. It shows that they're thinking about things and adjusting. you know. Yeah, I agree. It's called being human, Chris, isn't it? I've got lots of different opinions now to what I had when I was 20, thank Christ. Particularly about In Russia's time in Italy.

No, my opinions on Ian Rush, I've remained locked in. But your main opinion I remember most from Ellis from university was that you should eat spank bowl about four times a week. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you've shifted from that, haven't you? I haven't changed on that at all. I will not budge on the Spangball principle. Elle, there's a picture of you at university. What was the poster that's framed on the wall?

You're holding a blank video or something you have? Oh, I'm holding a blank video cassette. It's a black rubber motorcycle club poster. And exactly, you wouldn't have that now, would you? Maybe you would. No. And I didn't have a room devoted to VHS videos either. You're...

But I like Gladstone, I've changed. The Gladstone of podcasting. Gladstone. He's this interesting guy, as I say, he shifts his views on things as he gets older, as we all do. And on top of that, though, publication of his diaries have yielded yet more insight into this interesting man, not least about his sexual proclivities, because he did have some, but also his library. Okay, so his library contain tens of thousands of books. And each of them really adds more to our sense of his mind and the way he viewed the world. Give you a little bit of background for those who aren't aware of, uh, about. He's born in 1809. He has a classical education. This is real, classic early politician, this, Eton College in Oxford. That's a... Root Yves. Very much. Tick. Tick. A tale as old as time. He reads ancient literature, history, philosophy, poetry and plays at university, which could not be more different to my time at university. I think mine would read, he sort of read the minimum. A miss most... A lot of weed. Exactly, yeah. But Gladstone, he consumes all of this stuff. He also has a real fascination about world religions.

I think this is kind of quite interesting. This feels like a modern thing. Not someone who's born in 1809, but fair enough, he does. He reads books not just on Christianity and Judaism, but also Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism and Taoism. Yeah, but the British Empire, isn't it? Exactly. That's right.

As you'll find out, this is a lot of why he was doing this reading. It's preparation for his role as a leader of the country. This is an important point that I've, never really thought about. I'm just looking at the British Empire in 1898, which is the year Gladstone dies. The job of Prime Minister includes Canada, Australia, India, like a huge chunk of Africa and a big chunk of the Middle East as well. So I kind of forgot that the role of Prime Minister when Gladstone did it was so much bigger than it is now. I'm actually turning it for a meeting about some colony and you're like, sorry, which religion

are there again? Gotta find out about that, man. I didn't, you've got a big bit of South Africa. There's bits of South America, New Zealand as well. Yeah, it looks like the Philippines as well. There's so much. It feels now, like Andy Burnham, he feels like he's struggling to just take him like England, Scotland, you know, bits of the bits of the UK that are left. But Gladstone's time, you'd be, yeah, intray would be non-stop. No wonder he looks so old.

He's probably 27 in these photos. Yeah, but no sky news to sort of be constantly be outside his house. He consumed all this stuff largely because it's preparation for this hugely all-encompassing job that he hopes to land and then does land four times. And many of the books that he reads have survived from that time. And crucially, I don't know what your feelings are on this, he annotates most of them with his own thoughts in the borders and covers, telling us exactly what he thought about them.

What do you think about people who scribble in books, by the way? What's your feeling on that? I do it. Do you? Okay. Oh, do you? And I've got mixed feelings about giving books I've annotated into charity shops. Yes.

But then I have bought books from charity shops that have been annotated and it never bothers me. Are you writing, this is an interesting point or whatever, unlining something in a book or drawing a cock and balls in the top right corner? What sort of annotation are we looking at here? I'm not cock and ballsing my own books. What about the Kama Sutra? Yeah. No, I just write things like, oh, I wish.

your chance would be a fine thing in the march. In cookbooks. Well, genuinely, Chris, there's an element of that in the annotations that are written in Gladstone's books. Let me take you through some of the things he writes. This is his reaction to one of William Godwin's novels. William Godwin is the father of Mary Shelley, fact fans. This is what Gladstone added to the fly leaf in 1892. It says, a bad novel.

journeyman's work, there is absurdity, there is horror, but the absurdity is without any amusement and the horror is not impressive. Just take it to Oxfam, mate, surely. You don't have to keep it. Don't slag it off the route. Just take it, give it to someone else. The thing is, for a politician and a Prime Minister

as significant as Gladstone, his annotations must be absolutely fascinating. Yeah, fascinating. What they are. And here's another one, then, Elle. This one is for Robert Lowell's and Mood. New Priest in Conception Bay, it's a novel, in which Badstone wrote, as a novel, it is of small merit, and it exhibits that most, almost universal inaptitude of transatlantic novel writers,

which is to put a plot together. He seems like a really chill and not at all intense guy. Just seems sort of like just really easy going. So catty, isn't he Gladstone? Well, he did have warmth for other sorts of books, a bit catty, but on the other side, some he had warmth for. This is what the old charmer said to a female friend when he gave her a copy of Elizabeth Gascals, Cranford. He said this, I wish I could have written Cranford for you instead of merely sending you a copy. Not a bad line that, the old charmer. But when he was not flirting over books, Gladstone could also be quite binary in his perceptions of gender relations, as his copy of Mary Wilson's craft, Findication of the Rights of Women reveals, writing in January

1864, this is what he writes on the book, the board is there. The intention is upright, and the book contains many or some good things, but it aims by far too much at a facing and practical life distinctions which God and nature, his instrument, have made indelible. So in other words, he felt that men must remain superior

to women in certain things. So, yeah. I mean, you're going to cut him some slack, aren't you? Like, he's living in the 19th century. No, I'm not cutting him slack on that. I think it's... I think that's not okay. But fair enough, Chris.

you've put your starts out and on a podcast, which is a remarkable choice. He was born in 1812. He's going to have some outdated views. Ellis, would you like to quickly distance yourself from Chris as well as I am? Is that a poster of Gladstone you've got in your world then? Elsewhere in this same book, The Margins reveal how much of a staunch royalist he was. Wilsoncraft says it is universally acknowledge that kings have always been inferior in abilities and virtue to the same. number of men taken from the common mass of mankind, next to which Glassstone simply written,

no, he doesn't agree with that at all. He's that much of a royalist. He clearly had a real problem with Wilson Craft in general, though. In her 1794 study of the origins of the French Revolution, he's even more scathing. This is what he writes there. I think this is probably the most brutal of the feedback. This book carries a price. I apprehend much more on account of the authoress and her connections than of the matter. It is a high, hybrid between history and essay, the volume he'd been out for almost 90 years when I acquired it, and yet one third of it was uncut. Uncut, meaning it was unread. So essentially, he's saying the book is 90 years old and a third of it remains unread. It's that unreadable. But besides novels and

political tracks, Gladstone reads a good deal of history, particularly the church. He reads about leading figures such as Oliver Cromwell, whom he thought a terrible and destructive combination of religious zealotry within and militarism via the sword without. And also of the flung parts of the British Isles. Let me apologise. William Gladstone was born in 1809. I'm looking at his gravestone, and his grave is shared with his wife who was born in 1812.

I am deeply sorry, please don't email in. I would say there's a strong argument in the last five minutes. That's not what you should apologise for. I think it's about you backed him up on his annotation. I think that's what you need to apologise for. Okay. So giving Gladstone's close identification with parliamentary efforts to bring about home rule or devolution,

as it's now called, or devolution, to Ireland, Scotland and Wales, together with church disestablishment. It's not surprising that his library reveals a man. And this is what you talked about earlier, Chris, who read a good deal about the ecclesiastical, secular government of other states, particularly United States, because he's trying to figure out what the United Kingdom might look like if it was divided up into devolved administrations, essentially what he'd have to deal with in his job as prime minister. And that's essentially what he's trying to do, soak in information that can help him in his role, all of which shows that he's a prime minister who's curious about the world,

the world which he is prime minister was tasked with governing. But as a final point, and I think this is quite a sort of, this is slightly out of character of this. We also occasionally get a hint at a different kind of enthusiasm from Gladstone. It's revealed in Gladstone's copy of Herbert Slater's Roundabout the Bookstools, which was published in 1891. This is a book, okay? I think this sounds delightful. I'd love to read this. It's a book all about the joys of book buying and collecting and about browsing around book shops. What a nice thing to write a book about that is. Gladstone writes in the margins, this is pleasantly put together by an author who seems to have had great experiences. So maybe occasionally he wasn't quite so intense. But that's

essentially Gladstone. So he's a great reader. It really impacts the way that he governs as Prime Minister and kind of a real range of things he's taking in, which also reflect the empire in the world of his time. There you are. That's William Gladstone in his library. He's a friend of mine was a history teacher and Gladstone's his great hero. He thinks he's the most fascinating politicians ever.

Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. So I've always meant to read a biography of Gladstone for that reason. Well, send him a link to the show. A listen to listen, isn't it? It all helps. Also, like Andy Burnham is DJed at Dave Masterman's, or my friends.

What kind of set would Gladstone be pulling together? together. It would all be madrigals, I reckon. It would be sort of a lot of hymns. Yeah. So many hymns. The odd national anthem. And no songs by any female singers. Entirely male trackless. It'd clear the dance floor. All right. Time now to learn about one of the book habits of one of the greatest actors of the 20th century. A man I am fascinated by, Welsh-born, a stage. and screened giant, whose voice alone and his deep, with his deep baritone,

could famously fill a theatre. I'm talking about Richard Burns. Oh, not Alice James. Oh, no, Alex. Do you love Richard Burton now? Is he the hero of the Welsh to this day? I'm utterly fascinated by Richard Burton. He grew up not too far from me, and he died in 1984.

He was sort of like he would have been about my granddad's age. What were his biggest roles? Well, he was an amazing Shakespearean actor, but in the 60s. he was the highest paid actor in Hollywood at one point and he was probably the most he was probably the most famous actor in the world and obviously he was married to Elizabeth Taylor so you know the original

um so celebrity couple and but he was he was one of 10 or 11 kids I think and all his brothers went down the minor his dad was a minor he grew up in Pontry of Venn he was the 12th of 13 children yeah bloody hell Welsh was his first language

yeah well speaking family there's loads of footage of him going to watch Wales play rugby at Cardiff Arms Park with Elizabeth Taylor in a fur court. But he was, he was, people forget or can't imagine how bigger star he was, Richard Burton. Yeah. He's great in 1984.

Yes, of course. It's funny with Richard Burton, because I did check all the different films he'd been in. And I always thought, like, part of the Richard Burton story is that he never really achieved everything he could have achieved. He kind of wasted his talent with drink. But when you look at his CV, was it nominated for, like, On Oscar seven or eight times,

wasn't it? Seven times he was nominated for an academy, didn't win one. But there was also there was like a group of Celtic actors, very talented Celtic actors who were all alcoholics, who were sort of like Richard Harris and Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton.

So he definitely would have had if he'd not been an alcoholic he would have had a very different life. I mean he was only 58 when he died. Yeah. Richard Harris and Peter O'Toole, they all lived so well into old age, didn't they really? Yes, there's a very, very funny video of Peter Harris and Richard O'Toole at the rugby.

I knew you were going to say it. They are fucking hammered. They're wearing their old school, like rugby chairs, aren't they? Yeah, rugby top, because they'd all played, because Richard Burton was a quite a good player, and he loved rugby. But they are so pissed. It's really funny. That is a great clip. He's brilliant in the spy who came in from the conference.

cold. Richard Burton. He's great in that. He was. According to those who knew him best, and according to Burton himself, someone who could just as easily have spent his life instead of acting as an Oxford Don, because behind the acting, the drinking, the famously tempestuous marriages and the fame, Burton was one of the most voracious readers of his generation. Yeah. He wrote in his diary in 1969, My First Love is Not the Stage. It is a lovely book with words in it. He had an amazing vocabulary. So there's an absolutely fantastic interview he did

on the Dick Cavett show in about 1979 or 80, so like an hour long interview. And he's just such a clever guy. But the way he speaks, he's got an amazing turn of phrase. I love that phrase, a lovely book with words in it. So simple.

It's a really satisfying sentence, isn't it? I didn't clock that he wasn't born as Richard Burton. He was Richard Jenkins. He's not marrying Liz Taylor as... No. She's not becoming Liz Jenkins. No, no. Richie Jenkins.

I mean, he sounds like the one you can't remember the name of in Dirty Sanchez, like Richie Jenkins. I'm going to find it impossible to pronounce the name of the small mining village he was born in. Do you know it? Ponte Hydevin. Pontreideven, yeah. Pontry de Venn. Yeah.

Did you? Nice? Yeah. And there's... The statue of him? There's a mural of him, I think. And the chapel where he used to go is still there. And there's an aqueduct that his dad fell off when he was pissed and survived.

Wow. And survived. Wow. Wow. Richard Burton's father, when he wasn't falling off aqueducts, he was a coal miner. And you'll be shocked to learn he was a chronic drinker. Yeah. But he raised Richard Jenkins slash...

Burton, basically on his own, because he's... 13 kids will do that to you, I guess. Yeah. Richard Burton's mother died when he was not even two. So he was raised by his parents and older siblings as well as his dad. From an early age, Burton didn't spend his money on Toys a Suites, but he was spending his money on books. And his first format of choice was the famous Everyman's Library,

which was like cheap, well-produced, hardback editions of classic literature, launched by the publisher, J.M. Dent in 1906. So for a working class boy in Interwar Wales, they were the most affordable gateway to learning about the wider world. By the age of 12, Richard Burton was building his collection, but in his early 20s, he had nearly 300 Everyman volumes on his shelves. And his ambition, he himself stated, was to own the entire set. And that ambition of owning every single Everyman book would be achieved, not by Burton himself, by his wife Elizabeth Taylor. who went out, bought him the complete set of 1,000 every man volumes at a cost of 2,600 pounds.

That's lovely. I slightly worry the way you're describing that. You said, not by him, but by his wife. He came home one day. She said, look what I own now. Yes, these are mine. Well, interestingly, it did. We can both like reading Richard.

Exactly. This gift by Elizabeth Taylor to Richard Burton did actually prompt a domestic argument. So when it came to arranging the books, Burton wanted the books arranged by author. Taylor insisted they were arranged by colour, and they had a huge row. And I'm looking at your bookcases. Tom, you've kind of nailed it.

You're like, because, Elle, yours are arranged by colour, but Tom, you seem to be mixed. There's a bit of colour there's a few. Yeah, a little bit mixed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You could have mediated that argument between Burton and Taylor. For Burton, these volumes gave him a lifelong grounding

in classical and English literature in essays and biologues. in Dickens and Shakespeare, and they were the kind of the seed bed of his intellectual life. By adulthood, this is astonishing. Richard Burton was reading at a genuinely startling pace. In his diaries,

he estimates that he's reading an average of three books every two days. Wow. Three books every two days. He wrote in 1969, I am reading anything and everything. Most days I read at least three books, and one day I recently

read five. Five in a day. That's crazy. It is insane. But how, he doesn't specify, it might be like The Hungry Caterbell. He's not specifying how long these books are. I mean, I read five books a day with bedside with my five-year-old. Oh dear. The Gruffalo.

Yeah, completely. He needs to specify. Well, we get into what he was reading. One author that Richard Burton absolutely hated was Ernest Hemingway. Oh, really? Right. Which I find interesting because I think they're very similar, aren't they, as characters? Yes, I was going to say that.

A dislike formed in his teenage years while reading for whom the bell tolls, confirmed decades later by Carlos Baker's 1969 biography of the American novelist. Burton's verdict was this. The gross sentimentality of the man offended me and still does. I cannot understand why critics describe his harsh realism. To me, he was a romantic shit, a shit of the first order, and an Oscar-winning sentimentalist. Wow.

Loves himself a bit Hemingway, doesn't he? Well, at least someone's off-winning. Yeah, there we go. So wherever Burton went and being a Hollywood star meant he went everywhere, he always found the local bookshop. So filming on location in Yugoslavia, he hauled his interpreter into a bookshop with him. He came out with two novels by Rex Stout, the American creator of the detective Nero Wolf. He also took four novels by Anthony Powell, the great English chronicler of upper class, upper class manners. Two by Ngao Marsh, the New Zealand crime writer and Herman Melville's

the confidence man, an early meditation on speculation and capitalism. That single hall, we know is what he bought that one time in Yugoslavo, but it's a bit of a portrait in miniature of Burton's taste. He likes a bit of crime, comedy, and also some dense American literature as well. So Burton had a very distinctive reading pattern. These are his tactics for how he would read. So he would read something really demanding, like James Joyce's Ulysses, and then he would offset it with something lighter, like a detective novel or an adventure book. So you'd go really high end, high literature, and then absolutely lowbrow, and then back again. I do that. Have you ever read James Joyce's Ulysses?

I started it and could not be last. Absolutely the same here. Yeah. I got about two dozen pages in and was like, what is this? Fuck this, yeah. I was the same with To the Lighthouse. I remember when Robbins did to the Lighthouse at University

because he read English at Oxford he actually threw his copy across the Broadway and I couldn't be yeah, I could not be able to be asked. So given his own pace he would be quite waspish about the reading pace of others, especially about his wife.

He wrote this about Liz Taylor. She never reads a book, at least not more than a couple of pages at a time. It took her over a month to read a cheap thriller that I could have read in an hour. That's such a weird thing to be annoyed about. They've enjoyed their books in their own place. I read very little fiction, which absolutely staggers, Izzy. Really? Because she reads Pua fiction.

She doesn't read anything factual at all. Yeah, I can't. Yeah, I struggle with fiction. I used to love it and since my mid-30s have just completely fallen out of love with fiction Do you want to know what Liz Taylor was into? This is a note from Richard Burton

He writes Elizabeth is reading a long, fat novel about the mafia called The Godfather which she says is badly written and unput-downable I've read that, it's a good book I like that book, I think I absolutely inhaled that, that was good.

I'm assuming that's the book that became the movie Is it? Yes. Exactly that. Mario Puzhou, is that the author, I think? I'm almost certain that is right. Burton himself, that same week that Liz Taylor was reading The Godfather,

was reading a paperback history of the Mayans by Victor Wolfgang Bon Hagen. Nice. Classic Burton. Perhaps most remarkable of all was Burton's ability to rude, perhaps most remarkably of all, was Burton's ability to read fluently across multiple languages. that's delicious that the one word you've got wrong was read. It was his ability to rude. It's quite a mouthful.

Yeah, Burton could read. The one word you should be able to read is read. Burton could read in so many native tongues. So he, Welsh and English. Yeah, yeah, Welsh and English, but also French, Italian and Spanish. Wow. He wrote, I thrill to the thought of reading books in the writer's own tongue. So much time.

It's a bright guy, isn't he? Yeah. He really, he loved it. He had first tackled Marcel Proust as a student at Oxford. In the mid-1970s, when he was in his mid-40s, he returned to In Search of Lost Time, this time enjoying it far more than the first when he had, in his words, plowed through it. He even planned to buy a French paperback edition in Paris and read the book. the French and English versions side by side.

That is interesting in it. It doesn't mean like one eye each, does he? It doesn't mean that one is side by side. The French and the English versions. Amazing. But he obviously had a very curious mind. Burton had never received formal training in French literature as a boy. His schooling in South Wales did not stretch that far.

So as an adult, he simply taught himself. In his diary, he captured the excitement of an intellectually curious, middle-aged man finding a new world. He writes, it is pretty astounding to find a whole new world of literature, discovering it, may I say, with all the enthusiasm of an undergraduate at the ripe old age of 46 next week, think of all those unworked seams of gold. Think of the incomparable treasure trove to still be discovered in the immense storehouse of French literature. I can't wait for my next day off to augment my library. Oh, I love that. It's amazing.

Are you only a 12-year-ease-re read, didn't they? Of course, Soddy died of 58. Yeah. But if he's reading five books a day, Al, that's fine. If you're only five books a day, 12 years, it's fine. Yeah, yeah. Finish books. Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Burton's home library, which he kept at his house in Switzerland, ran into thousands of volumes. He kept traveling libraries too, so that he was never without books on set, a bit like Napoleon. Which isn't bad, obviously, for a boy from a mining village whose father was a drinker and whose mother died before he could walk.

us will ever acquire a library on Burton's scale, but his example carries a wider lesson. He shrugged off the idea that a poor background is a barrier to knowledge, and he read and read and read all the way to the end of his short life at the age of 58. Yeah, amazing, isn't it? That's absolutely fascinating. Yeah. What he needed was one of those bus libraries. Imagine him driving around of one of those.

That's who those things were aimed for. That's their dream customer. Yeah, don't bother with a car. Richard, get a, buy a mobile library, drive around. Exactly, exactly. There we go. What a fascinating topic that was. Thank you very much to Dr. Darrell Leeworthy.

Yeah. Our amazing historian, yeah. Which great readers through history have we missed? Do let us know, hello at oh what a time.com. And also going back to the start, if you could feed anyone in history, anything, what you're picking and why? Yeah, absolutely. I would also like to briefly plug it. a new venture that I'm doing. Is that okay, just to wrap this up?

Do it. Because these two fine young boys will be on it soon. I've started a brand new podcast, which is called Last Match, Then Bed. It may be of interest to some of you. It may not be of interest to others. But it is about old school championship manager. It's a celebration of championship manager in the 90s, this football management game that I loved and was so important to me. Basically, each week I manage a team and I'm joined with a celebrity assistant manager, to me manager's team and the listeners themselves also get involved in the management of the team. I recorded an episode with Chris Scull about the greatest ever first 11 on championship manager and Ellis James, you're going to be my assistant manager in a couple of weeks.

Yes, I am looking forward to it. To try and guide the team on. If that sounds like that's your sort of thing, do follow last match them bed and follow the Instagram and give it a listen and see if you like it. If it's not, I completely understand. Anyway, plug over. But don't tell me. Crucially, don't tell me. Just keep it to yourself. Exactly. But if that's your thing, I'd love you. to listen. But there you go. We'll see you next week. We'll see you soon. Bye.

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