Beryl Gott and the Gott Bequest

By Library and Digital Assistant, Philip Wilde  In volume 10 of our copy of ‘The Northern Gardener’ published in 1956, there is an article by Kenneth Lemmon, the Honorary Editor, which says of the Gott Collection in Leeds Central Library ,’I cannot think of another such collection outside the R.H.S. Lindley Library or the British…

Read More: The Thirty Years War (1618-1648)

by Antony Ramm, Information and Research, Central Library This is an entry in our Read More series. These are ‘long-form’ articles, where staff offer a curated and detailed look at areas of our book collections, usually based around a specific theme or subject. These posts aim to guide the interested reader through to those books that offer a…

A ‘Little’ Journey

London, Switzerland, Germany… What do all these places have in common? The answer is: you can find them all within the Leeds-Bradford area. Today we thought we’d take a little journey through Europe, Secret Library style. We’ll start in the well-known Leeds suburb of Little London, before calling in on the city’s other Little London,…

The Art of the First World War

by Adam Barham, Art Library. The First World War had a striking effect in the art world, influencing both the style and themes of many artists. Our collection at Central Library includes an impressive range of books concerning art from the wartime period. Housed in the Art Library, the books cover various art styles ranging from pencil…

Read More: Marking the Centenary of World War I

by Antony Ramm, Information and Research, Central Library This is an entry in our Read More series. These are ‘long-form’ articles, where staff offer a curated and detailed look at areas of our book collections, usually based around a specific theme or subject. These posts aim to guide the interested reader through to those books that offer a…

Telling the Future in the Past

You might not have needed a fortune teller to predict the country’s performance in some of this summer’s sporting events but, if you’re still looking for a little old-fashioned advice from Destiny, the Local and Family History department at Leeds Central Library can certainly help you out. Mother Shipton’s Wheel of Fortune was printed in…

The Gledhow Hall scrapbook

One fascinating item in our collections is a scrapbook put together by the matron at Gledhow Hall hospital during the First World War. Officially entitled ‘The Great European War’ the scrapbook consists of photographs, newscuttings, letters and ephemera relating to life in the hospital between 1915 and 1919. Gledhow Hall at the time of the…

Read More: Finding Hemingway

by Antony Ramm, Information and Research, Central Library This is an entry in our Read More series. These are ‘long-form’ articles, where staff offer a curated and detailed look at areas of our book collections, usually based around a specific theme or subject. These posts aim to guide the interested reader through to those books that offer a…