Novelist Hunter Davies explains to Jane Wright the importance of libraries to civilisation

THE behaviour of writer Hunter Davies hardly chimes at times with his role as patron of the Friends of Highgate Library.
He confesses cheerfully that his wife, the novelist Margaret Forster, “reads one novel every day, but while she’s doing that, I prefer to watch football on telly”.
He adds that, since he agreed to be patron of his local library support group in 1993: “I’ve done bugger all for the library, though I have been going there regularly for the past three months. I’m writing a biography of Sean Connery at the moment and I’ve been getting his videos out.”
Nevertheless, Mr Davies, 68, is set to speak at the 10th anniversary meeting of the Friends at the library in Chester Road, Highgate, from 7.30pm tonight (Thursday), when he will reflect on his writing career, “From The Beatles to Gazza”.
His official biography of The Fab Four first appeared in 1968. He then moved on to William Wordsworth and Christopher Columbus, while his account of Paul Gascoigne’s life sold 300,000 copies when it was published last year, and is due to come out in paperback in June.
My writing hasn’t progressed at all,” he jokes. “It’s the same stuff as 40 years ago, just trying not to bore people and, most of all, falling in love with the subject and conning some publisher into giving me the money.”
In fact, our interview is delayed by a summons from Gazza for the writer, who lives in Boscastle Road, Highgate, to meet him at a hotel to discuss some new chapters for the paperback edition.
Davies adds quickly that the footballer, who has lost a lot of weight recently and battled with addiction and depression “isn’t ill and wasting away”.
“What the papers have been saying is all rubbish,” he says. “He’s as fit as a fiddle. He’s still taking medication for depression, but it’s not as strong as it used to be. And he hasn’t had a drink for two years.”
But, away from footballers, Hunter Davies’s true allegiances to reading and the library begin to show through. He announces, amazingly for a journalist, who still contributes regularly to the Sunday Times, the New Statesman and Daily Mail: “I don’t use email or the web. Books and the printed word are just so much better.”
He has also written numerous books for children, including the Flossie Teacake novels and the Snotty Bumstead Collection and is now the grandfather of a five-year-old who attends Brookfield Primary School next door to Highgate Library, just as her mother, Davies’s daughter Caitlin, did before her.
Mr Davies says: “It’s true that kids these days are on the internet all day, and playing computer games. But libraries aren’t at all outmoded. Highgate has an excellent children’s library, which is used by all the local schools. And as long as we can breathe, the best information and the most fun will be in books.”
Mr Davies himself grew up in his beloved Cumbria, where he still lives for half the year. He continues: “I have many happy memories of the public library in Carlisle, which I went to as a teenager.” He is equally enthusiastic about today’s book clubs, which he describes as “brilliant”.
He agreed to be patron of the Friends of Highgate Library when, alongside other libraries in Camden, it was in jeopardy from the Town Hall, which was threatening sweeping closures. Mr Davies chaired a protest meeting against the proposed cuts in 1993 which was also attended by Fay Weldon. He recalls: “I didn’t realise I had inspired Bert Humberstone. But afterwards he rang me up.” Bert went on to found the Friends of Highgate Library and continues as its chairman to this day.
He runs his eyes over his speech defending libraries all those years ago and recalls, dismissively: “I said a lot of poncey things.”
But as he begins to rehearse his former arguments, his passion grows.
He tells me: “When you close libraries you help to kill a community. You make us a less civilised society.
“Libraries provide free warmth for the poor and unemployed, and escape, amusement and mental sustenance. Children need them to grow up in and they keep writers off the streets.”
How so, I enquire?
He explains: “Through the Public Lending Right, which pays us a penny every time one of our books is borrowed. Last year, my dear wife got the maximum annual payment of £6,000 and I got just £1,100. She’s a much more popular writer than me, but the marriage survives!” Ten years on, how does he find Highgate Library now?
“Well, it’s a shame it’s not open seven days a week, because the community would benefit, but we obviously just can’t afford it. It’s still a hive of activity in a beautiful building and the staff are brilliant. There’s a way of ordering my videos on the computer which I can’t do, but they help.”
And now, at last, the library champion is in his stride, as he continues with boyish enthusiasm: “Did you know that Chairman Mao when he was young and Casanova when he was old and past it both used to be librarians?”