Visit the British Museum Reading Room

Once the main reading room of the British Library, the British Museum Reading Room is a legendary institution which sits at the heart of the modern British Museum.



The visitor list is a who's who of twentieth century thought, with worthy readers including Karl Marx, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Mahatma Gandhi, Rudyard Kipling, George Orwell, George Bernard Shaw, Mark Twain, Norbert Elias, Virginia Woolf, Arthur Rimbaud and H. G. Wells.

Sadly, with the move of the main function to the British Library at Holborn, the reading room remains largely a tourist attraction in the present day, and has more recently become a temporary home for major exhibitions. We are, however, told that the Reading Room will revert to its normal use in 2012.

For more information on the Reading Room, visit http://www.britishmuseum.org/the_museum/history_and_the_building/reading_room.aspx.

_{^British Museum Reading Room from Flickr courtesy of Mister-E^}