What’s the use of a book without pictures or conversation?

Wise words there from Alice and we at Treasure Hunt Towers are big fans of pictures. And books. (And conversations but that’s for another day). So today we’re considering the latest addition to the 24/7 library – The Illustrated London News (the clue’s in the title). This was the first ever illustrated weekly newspaper and ran from 1842-2003. Contributors included Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, W Heath Robinson, Kate Greenaway and Agatha Christie. And it’s now all available online via the News and Magazines page of the Westminster Library Gateway or the - Exclusive Resources page

They struck lucky in their very first week – the hot news of the week was a devastating fire in Hamburg so an artist was sent to the British Museum to find an engraving which he copied with additional flames for the front page. A two page spread inside was devoted to a Magnificent Fancy Dress Ball given by Queen Victoria but in case that was too cheerful, there was also an Awful Steamboat Explosion in America and a Dreadful Railway accident near Paris.

Every issue has something of interest. You can pick one at random and browse it – the cover picture on the week I was born is of Professor Dorothy Hodgkin receiving the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, while other articles (all copiously illustrated) cover Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s visit to Washington, Inside Red China Today and the new traffic signals just in force (NO U TURN, SCARBOROUGH A64 etc). All fascinating stuff.


Royalists will have a field day browsing through the many special editions devoted to royal weddings and funerals (the 2nd May 1882 number celebrating the marriage of Prince Leopold and Princess Helena has some splendid engravings of the groom’s student life at Oxford though sadly this was followed only two years later by a commemorative funeral edition after the Prince’s death, giving them a chance to re-use some of the same pictures), while war-buffs will want to spent time browsing the issues relating to the Blitz. Or you could check out your own workplace – I’ve been reading about the ratepayers’ meeting May in 1856 which agreed that a public library in Paddington was ‘needless and inexpedient’, while during the summer of 1854 Marylebone Free Library had 5489 male visitors and 179 ladies who between them read 5655 books, all no doubt Highly Improving.

Whatever your interests – films, theatre, history, science, fashion - the Illustrated London news is bound to have something to interest you. And the Treasure Hunt Towers top search tip? The default search is Keyword. Ignore that and click on the button for Entire Document and you’ll get far more results.