Celebrity Endorsement

I was reading recently Alan Bennett's diaries, which I picked up in Kilburn Library.  They cover 205 to 2015, including two comments on the Brent Libraries Transformation Project.  He attended a public meeting in Brent where he referred to the libraries transformation as "child abuse", something that was broadcast by BBC Newsnight.  His reaction to the Council's successful defence to the legal challenge was to claim that any suggestion that Brent Council might improve its libraries was "a dreary and cliched PR strategem" of a kind that "worked for Goebbels".

Of course he can't have known in 2011 what level of success Brent Libraries would subsequently attain, but as far as I can see he made not the slightest attempt to find out what the Council was proposing.  He just relied on an evidently one sided briefing from the litigants that ignored all that.

He also remarks that a library has to be "handy", which suggests to me a lack of familiarity with the area.  If one stands at the door of the old Kensal Rise Library, roughly a mile to the left is Kilburn library, roughly a mile to the right is Harlesden Library, and roughly a mile behind you is Willesden Library.  Together with North London's extensive public transport connections there can be few places in the UK where it is so easy to find a public library open seven days a week.

As I said, I picked this volume up in Kilburn Library which prior to the project was open only five days a week, and is now open seven.  As a result of the project it got an extensive refurbishment that should see it many years into the future.

Of course, Alan Bennett like all celebrities didn't feel the need to check any of this, or to correct what he published.  Nor will anyone ever hold him to account for not doing so.