When Frank Hickinbotham worked as the British Political Agent in Kuwait in the 1940s, he struggled with boredom and isolation. The records of his personal purchases detail the importance of books in combatting the monotony, and his choices offer an insight into the role of reading as a response to his situation. The Life of Sir Percy Cox: The Amazing Record of a Great Imperialist, by Philip Graves, for example, indicates a desire to reimagine the imperial project as one of uncomplicated excitement and exhilaration and in so doing, to reflect an idealized version of his own uninspiring administrative duties. An order for Inside Latin America by John Gunther—unfulfilled because the title was sold out—suggests he was not alone in looking for escapism in the pages of a book.
Hickinbotham was able to stock up on a couple of books, We Like the Country and Cottage into House, by a favorite author, Anthony Armstrong, titles which offered a reassuring portrayal of home. His purchase of The Family Weekend Book, by Beryl Irving, an eclectic mix of physical and cerebral activities, speaks to the timeless challenge of entertaining bored children and offers advice for those moments when “the family is no longer seen through a glamourous glow of love.”
You can find Hickinbotham’s papers from his time in Kuwait in the Qatar Digital Library, giving a fascinating look at daily life in the region nearly a century ago.Then, as now during the Covid-19 outbreak, books have furnished us with new skills, information, diversion and distraction, and a sense that we are not alone. Stories of plagues and pandemics have helped us to contextualize and make sense of the events we are living through. Perhaps most importantly, they provide us with the comfort of a shaping narrative, a structure which fully realizes and contains the drama of the situation, in contrast to protracted tedium of lockdown. What, after all, can be more comforting than the sense of an ending?
Reading is both solitary and communal, private and public. In our isolation, we are still participants in wider reading trends, and while we may be alone with a book, we share in its impact. The archival materials that can be accessed through Qatar National Library’s website and the Qatar Digital Library offer us a glimpse into the reading habits of the past. Its online catalog and collections of ebooks and audiobooks facilitate and document our reading habits in the present.
* Juliet Lovering leads the Library’s Creative Writing Circle for Adults. For more on the club, see our events page.
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