I am aware of how ludicrous the concept of ‘woke librarians’ might sound, but the evidence is compelling. Even the British Library has a ‘Decolonising Working Group’, which has successfully persuaded its management to review its collections, ‘powerfully reinterpret’ statues of its founders, and put more than three hundred authors on a watchlist if they have even the flimsiest of connections to the slave trade. One of the group’s more risible findings is that the library’s main building is a monument to imperialism because it resembles a battleship.
