booklover:libraryland:chrbutler:

From Britannica blogger Robert McHenry:

Over my desk hangs a large print of a photograph (seen below) taken in London during World War II. It is of the library of Holland House, one of the great houses of London from the time of its construction early in the 17th century until its ruin in the Blitz of World War II…

One night in September 1940 the house was largely destroyed by German bombs. But the library – perhaps fortified by the weight of those books, perhaps (let us imagine) defiant of the book-burning Nazi regime – stood. The roof fell in, great beams hung precariously, but the shelves were mostly intact and the books remained quietly and neatly arranged in their proper order.

In the photograph, three men stand quietly at those shelves, seemingly oblivious of the rubble all about them. They are hatted, of course – two homburgs and a fedora – which brings home to the viewer the ambiguity of their situation: Are they indoors or out? One of the men is looking into a book; a second is just about to pull one from its shelf; and the third is simply scanning the spines arrayed before him.

What strikes us most forcefully is the men’s sangfroid. Surrounded by the wrack of war, they stand in silent contemplation of the books.

Merely British stiff-upper-lip? Perhaps. But it seems more than that to me.