The London Library is an independent subscription-based lending library founded in 1841 and located at 14 St James’s Square, in the heart of St James’s, Westminster. It is one of the UK’s major literary institutions, with a historic building, a million-volume collection, and a long association with prominent writers.
 
The library holds over one million volumes, with strengths in history (political, social, ecclesiastical, topographical, military), cultural expression (literature, language, fine and applied arts, performing arts), and “thought & life” (philosophy, religion, folklore, social and political sciences).
 
Historic members and users have included Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, George Eliot, Bram Stoker, Virginia Woolf, Daphne du Maurier, Angela Carter, Stanley Kubrick and Ian Fleming.
 
T. S. Eliot served as a long‑standing president and once remarked that the disappearance of the London Library would be “a disaster to civilisation”.
 
Inside is like a time capsule Old signs survive all over the building: 1930s notices about switching off lights, wartime air‑raid instructions, pointing-finger directional signs and other relics of earlier phases of the building. It's actually much bigger on the inside with the structure comprising several buildings combined. Indeed some of the bookshelves are structural holding up the library.
 
Ironically it was hit by a bomb during the Second World War which destroyed the  German ecclesiastical section.
 
Interesting facts...
Ghsotbusters was filmed here!