• I HAD not been to Belsize Library for quite a long time.

What a shock when I went this time. It is a library in name only.

It is now a coffee bar and playground.

Belsize was once the most delightful library in fact my favourite with all the best writers: Bernard Shaw, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and all the rest. Now, no books, all gone. What a philistine borough we have now become.

ANITA BROOKS, NW1