Bookmen of the British Museum

When, eleven years ago, I retired from the service of the Trustees of the British Museum, I was honoured by two or three invitations to write my memoirs. I declined, on two grounds: that I had been born in neither of the purples, the princely or the proletariate; and (for at that time young people in their early twenties were publishing their autobiographies) that I did not think I was young enough.