It is nice to see that our favourite library the London Library in St James's Square has just completed the latest stage of its refurbishment. The library has always been something of a labyrinthine but under the auspices of London firm Haworth Tompkins the new additions, particluarly the art room have been done with a real sensitivity and undertanding of the library's history and atmosphere.

The project's attention to detail descends even to the toilets. Turner Prize-winning artist Martin Creed has made a strange and unsettling decorative scheme for the toilets in the basement.

The London Library, the largest independent lending library in the world, was founded by the great writer Thomas Carlyle, who opposed the policies of the British Library (among other things, he didn't like the ne'er-do-wells allowed to loaf around reading newspapers) and thought the catalogues were useless (the London Library eventually invented a new cataloguing system to address this).

Carlyle lived at Cheyne Row in Chelsea and wanted a library closer to his house than Bloomsbury's British Museum and his own place to store books. While he believed that reading should be done at home, he was himself troubled by “piano-playing neighbours on one side, crowing cockerels on the other”, so the London Library was created as a home away from home for readers seeking quiet. It moved to its current site in 1845 from the first floor of the Travellers Club on Pall Mall, and has evolved in stages over the last 165 years. It is well worth a visit.