Honorary Graduates
Orations and responses
Response by Professor Sir Colin St John Wilson
9 JULY 1998
Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, fellow Graduands and distinguished guests I am
very grateful to this University for honouring me with a doctoral degree today.
When in 1962 I took upon myself the obligation of trying to build what was to
become the national Library I was aware of the famous warning of Edmund Burke
that runs as follows "Those who would carry on great public schemes must be
proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments,
the most shocking insults and worst of all the presumptuous judgement of the
ignorant upon their designs." I even took note of the fact that Wren, who
took 35 years to build a building, St Paul's, was put on half-pay
for 10 years and fired before the completion of the building (but at least by
taking 36 years I have beaten him to the position in the Guinness Book of
Records for longevity !). Furthermore when the Houses of Parliament were
completed, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, offered the opinion that the
architect should be hung in public as an example to the profession. In
other words I did know that the Brits like to give a hard time to anyone who
tries to build a monument. What I hadn't gambled on was a species of
critic who did not consider it necessary even to see what he wished to abuse:
and a Press machine that automatically regurgitated every such bit of abuse on
every occasion in which the British Library was mentioned. I won't say
that I did not dare to go out in broad daylight but I did think it wise to keep
a low profile.
I am told that when Sibelius' 4th Symphony was performed for the first time
in Helsinki it was roundly booed and that, when it was given its premier
performance in New York the conductor thought it wise to apologise to the
audience before performing it. Thirty years later the critics argued that it was
probably his greatest work. I have enjoyed, it that's the right word,
rather similar response from the critics in relation to the British Library.
For the last fifteen years at least I and my wife (who is also one of the
Partners in designing the building and who did not enjoy being consistently
asked 'how is your husband's building coming along?') have either not dared to
go out to a dinner party, or, if we did, to apologise at once to our fellow
guests for being the architects of the much abused Library.
The first turn in the tide of opinion came when the new London taxi-cab was
launched from the Entrance Hall of the nearly-finished building, a
function that was not envisaged in drawing up the original brief for the
building and which indeed required some modification to the width of the taxi's
mud-guards to get it into the building. However, as everyone knows, the
true arbiters of taste in London are the cab-drivers, a sturdily opinionated
body of men and women if ever there was one. The next sign came when you sir,
Vice-Chancellor, wrote to me inviting me to accept the honour of a
doctoral degree at this University which I so gladly accept today.
Others then plucked up courage and followed your lead. Her Majesty the
Queen opened the building two weeks ago and referred to it as "a labour of
love", a phrase over which a certain ambiguity might still be said to hover: but
the Minister for Culture, bless him, called the building "a masterpiece."
It is therefore, Chancellor, with great pleasure and perhaps without the
need, after all to apologise, that I accept the honour that you confer upon me
today.