Reading, Retreat, Repeat

The gift of travel is hard to beat. It can’t be returned or left to gather dust on a mantlepiece. It is an invitation to a new experience, to a new place. You can imagine my joy then when I received the gift of a trip to The Gladstone Library, a place its website tells me will “nourish mind, body and spirit”. Now doesn’t that sound like just what we all need these days?

Receiving over 13,000 residential and day visitors in 2024, the Gladstone Library is the UK’s only residential library. It boasts 26 bedrooms, a restaurant, a lounge, meeting rooms, a chapel, and the reading rooms for which it is best known. Founded in 1889 by former prime minister William Gladstone, its collection of 20,000 books reflects his Christian faith and belief in access to education for public benefit, a subject regular readers of my blog will know is close to my heart. The corridors of the building are adorned with Gladstone quotes designed to evoke these messages and stir contemplation. My personal favourite seems perhaps more pertinent today than ever:

“All human beings have the same claims upon our support … The ground on which we stand is not British nor European, it is human…”

Entering through the heavy doors and smelling the books, I was transported into a magical haven of calm a far cry from the daily routine of life. The lamp on my little desk that evening gave an otherworldly feel to my otherwise rather pedestrian reading of articles and books for work. The staff and other visitors to the library were friendly but kept to themselves, a shared understanding that intrusive small talk might break the spell of the place.

I was seeking a little moment of peace in troubled times. What I found was peace, but also something else. It was space in which I could think, I could re-think, I could interrogate my thoughts and feelings. I could stop the clock of the untenable juggle and focus on a few ideas instead of the endless context switching of modern academic life. Katrina McChesney has written powerfully of the need to, and importantly the possibility of, reimagining the routine of academia. Experimenting with leaving the binary of wellbeing or success behind, Katrina foregrounds agency, choice, and self-knowledge.

My friends, colleagues and I talk about agency, choice, and self-knowledge seemingly endlessly. We give supportive hugs, start emails with genuine questions about the recipient’s mood, leave voice notes with tired voices. We have a lot of good ideas about how to change, not only ourselves but the structures which condition our lives and our work. What I learnt from my time on retreat was that change needs fertile ground and nurturing. I first needed to create, or to have offered to me, the space in which I could quiet my mind, the voices of others, the pings of the emails and whats app, to even begin to awaken my self-knowledge and imagination.

Leaving the library, the sun felt sharp on my eyes, and the noises of bustle in the village jarring to my senses. Of course, it was only a few minutes before I adjusted once again to the outside world. My daughter rushed up to tell me all she had been doing with her grandparents, my phone buzzed with email notifications, and a nagging doubt crept in, forcing me to wonder whether I had used my time productively enough. But even if I hadn’t, it maybe wouldn’t matter.

In the quiet, in the peace, I could imagine retreat as a daily exercise. It wont just appear, as my gift did one Christmas under the tree, but I have the muscle memory now to take it for myself. I will also do all I can to encourage and enable others to do the same.  

May 2025