The Naval Historical Library

HIGH ABOVE THE HOTELS and bed‐sitters of London's Earl's Court district towers the Ministry of Defence's twenty‐eight storey Empress State Building. On the twenty‐fifth floor of this imposing edifice is housed the largest and finest naval library in the world. It comprises more than a hundred and twenty‐five thousand books, over a hundred thousand pamphlets, a magnificent collection of charts and atlases, and some four‐hundred‐odd manuscripts. The whole collection is probably worth more than £1 million.