Firstly, I would like to thank Elsie Bainbridge for getting in touch to point out that The Elms in Rottingdean, the former home of Rudyard Kipling, is not preserved by The Rottingdean Preservation Society, but the Kipling Gardens next to it is.
I hope I haven't offended Elsie, or her friend who now owns The Elms, with my latest musings and I shall go back to the drawing board with my Kipling research. I clearly have a lot to learn.
Talking of learning, I enjoyed a marvellous tour of the Bodleian Library in Oxford the other day.
One of the library's top guns took me down in the stacks and to reach our destination we had to walk through the tunnel beneath Broad Street.
An old-fashioned-looking conveyor belt transports ancient books from one side of the street to the other for the scholars who ask to have a look at them.
This subterranean stroll left me in quite a lather — it was pretty hot beneath the Broad — but I was even more excited to see some of the library's amazing hidden treasures.
These included a Chaucerian poem featuring colourful illustrations, 27 books donated by Oliver Cromwell, and an exchange of letters between Henry James and HG Wells.
I think I might also have been shown a book once owned by Thomas More, but by this point I thought I was dreaming.
The literary riches owned by the Bodleian are beyond belief, but many of them may never be seen by the general public unless a major redevelopment takes place.
Julian Blackwell has given a £5m donation to the Bodleian to enable this to happen, but the library needs to get permission to build a new book depository in Osney Mead, before any changes off Broad Street can take place.
The over-subscription of the Magna Carta exhibition last year demonstrated the potential public demand for the Bodleian's treasures, and it will be interesting to see what happens over the coming months.
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