Ten years after it was due to be opened, Queen Elizabeth walked through the gates of the British Library in London yesterday, and joked that the official ceremony date had been in the royal diary "rather longer than most". During their tour of the library, which was once controversially described by Prince Charles as "an academy for secret police", the Queen and Prince Philip viewed original texts of the Magna Carta, the Lindisfarne Gospels and manuscripts written by Jane Austen. Also on public display are the original handwritten lyrics of the Beatles classics, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Help and Ticket to Ride.
Among the 12 million items housed at the library, Queen Elizabeth, who is a keen racehorse owner, was shown a copy of the Sporting Life newspaper from 1957 with a front-page picture of her with her first winner at Epsom racecourse, Carrozzo.
A group of Britain's leading authors attended the opening, including Harold Pinter, P.D. James and Lady Antonia Fraser. The library cost £511 million sterling and took 36 years to design and build. It has not been without its controversial moments and while congratulating a group of the architects, engineers and builders involved in the project, Queen Elizabeth referred to their work as "this labour of love must have seemed at times to be endless".
At present the library is open to the public seven days a week and entry is free, although there is speculation that charges are being considered after the chief executive, Mr Brian Lang, recently warned of the "grave financial position" facing the library. Also at the opening, the Culture Secretary, Mr Chris Smith, said the library - which is next to the Gothic splendour of London's St Pancras Railway Station - was a "magnificent building", which had attracted "just a touch of controversy". While it was not clear from his remarks if Prince Charles was among them, Mr Smith observed that many of the building's original critics "now had a change of heart and recognised it as a great architectural achievement".
The library has had a long and varied journey to its present home. It was originally housed in the British Museum in Bloomsbury when the collection was started in 1753. At the Museum, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Thomas Hardy and the poet W.B. Yeats used the famous round reading room as a study. The row over the new library centred on the amount of time and money that was spent on building it. Its designer, Prof Colin St John Wilson, who was knighted for his work, blamed criticism of the architecture on his decision to dissolve his design company last year.