Platform 9 3/4 and the British Library, Day 76

I love how you can get on the tube here and make it to your destination via so many routes (there are 275 stations!). In many cases you can choose to travel on above ground trains (my favourite) or on the underground (Hampstead station is 192 ft below ground!). I started my journey today at Liverpool Street Station (I love how this station is always busy, even late at night) and handed in my resume to the store Lush. I then went to Kings Cross Station to try and find platform 9 3/4 and after roaming around for a good ten minutes looking incredibly lost, I finally found it tucked away.


Can you imagine if you were a little kid and completely believed in the world of Harry Potter and found this? I’m sure there have been many to try and shove themselves through the wall….

Anyways, I love how this station is always bustling. Before the train leaves the station, a whistle is blown as a warning and you see everyone running with their luggage to catch the train.


I then went to the British Library across from Kings Cross. It is quite a peculiar looking building on the outside, and rather ugly as well. However inside is absolutely stunning! It reminded me of the reference library in Toronto. The British Library has been deemed one of the greatest libraries in the world; perhaps because it houses original manuscripts belonging to some of the world’s greatest authors?


I got to see the original Alice in Wonderland story written by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (he published the revised book under the name Lewis Carroll) who originally wrote this fairy tale for a girl named Alice Lidell. It was so amazing to see the original words and illustrations of a story that was to become so well known and celebrated.

I also got to see lyrics scrawled on the back of envelopes, scrap paper and birthday cards by John Lennon. Hard Day’s Night was scrawled on the back of a birthday card for his son Julian who had recently turned one and an untitled verse was written on a lined piece of paper, music notes and a weird doodle of a man surrounding the messy handwriting.

And then there was a draft of Sylvia Plath’s poem Insomniac, scrawled on a plain white piece of paper. For some reason looking at her handwriting was kind of eerie and seemed more “real” to me than Lewis Carroll’s or John Lennon’s. I think that anyone who reads her poems or novels feel as if they know her in some way because her writing is so personal, her voice so distinctive. Seeing her dainty handwriting just increased that personal element to her writing and it was as if I was reading one of her diary entries, not a poem!

I saw one of Jane Austen’s notebooks from 1792, filled with stories and short pieces she wrote between twelve and seventeen, and Sigmund Freud’s handwritten manuscript Creative Writers and Day Dreaming which he delivered in 1907 in Venice.

I left feeling so inspired and very lucky to have seen original work from some of the world’s greatest writers.