Wednesday 23 October: Carmen Lavin

The Silk Road runs in exhibitions in the British Library and the British Museum.

Between the two I joined another route today. It took me past blue plaques commemorating lives, loves and creativities of the Bloomsbury Group in Gordon Square, heading on the Bloomsbury Bookshop Crawl to the first staging-post, the five-storey architectural wonder of Waterstone’s.

Smaller ones followed, each distinct, from the drifts of incense and resin filling Treadwell’s magical space –

– to the smell of ancient leather and echoes of Dickens when the door opened to the ring of the bell in Jarndyce. And within the red doors of Bookmarks bookshop Roberta Flack’s voice sang, atmospherically.

From the haunts of generations of browsers, curious readers and students in these sanctuaries I went into the basement exhibition in Store Street into the expressions of the Barbican Young Poets, 26 writers and members of the Lettering Arts Trust. Settings of poetry on paper and words etched in wood and stone, gilt and scrolls, made me hold my breath in wonder. The quiet intensity of the inspirations was spellbinding.

Out I stepped beyond the canopies of sunlit last leaves on Bloomsbury’s plane trees, my mind remoulded by the revelations of this year’s Festival theme – Human.Kind.

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