Michael Smethurst, Director General of Humanities and Social Sciences at the British Library, gave the first of the Alice Brett Memorial Lectures last October, talking, suitably enough, about 'Tthe British Library in the 1990s'.

Editorial.

'I have never made any pretence, indeed how could I? to be either a Scholar or a trained Bibliographer, yet from the very first I found myself acquiring, day by day, a "quantum suff" of Literature, just enough to enable me to feel that though I could hardly expect to become a real "man of letters", yet some day I might pass muster as a "man of books and reading".'

Augustine Birrell : man of books and reading.