Jon Day.

The London Library has always beguiled readers who love books both as vessels of meaning and as physical objects; readers who love to touch and smell as well as to read. The library has nestled quietly in the north-west corner of St. James’s Square for over 160 years, and its modest façade now hides over a million books. You can measure its holdings in distance rather than number: miles of books, serried ranks of print, line its labyrinthine interior of cast iron floors and solid wooden shelving…