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A BRIEFING from the head of Camden’s libraries, Mike Clarke (pictured), to the borough’s new culture chief, Councillor Tulip Siddiq, has stung some of his staff, I gather.

Admittedly, judging by a copy sent to me this week, its pages can be said to reek of a feeling that all is well with the borough’s libraries.

This annoyed my “whistleblower” who writes that Mr Clarke showed a “bland pretence that there are no serious problems or complaints”.

And this, according to my informant, is definitely not the case.

In one passage, Mr Clarke writes: “Chalk Farm and Kilburn libraries have rectified glare from windows on PC screens.”

In listing such “trivia” is Mr Clarke pulling the wool over Cllr Siddiq’s eyes, asks my informant?

Our disgruntled staff member says Mr Clarke “deliberately presents a misleading impression of the situation in libraries, disguising the seriously fraught atmosphere in which staff are required to work”.

Beryl, loved by people

WHO was the real Beryl Bainbridge?

In the mind of the general public she was a truly gifted storyteller.

In the eyes of literary critics she was, perhaps, one of our greatest novelists.

To some obituarists this week she possessed all those gifts as well as being a woman who liked a tipple, and was, perhaps, a bit daffy.

One obituarist couldn’t resist to quoting from a Daily Mail article that described her “wild eyes” and someone who “fell down at parties”.

Well, I suppose, she was all those things, but there was a quality in Beryl most literary critics had not seen – and perhaps couldn’t see.

She loved people, ordinary people, the people who lived around her, the people in the corner shop, the people who would take up causes, the sort of people some fellow writers and literary critics perhaps don’t think enough of.

Many writers I have come across, often live fairly walled lives, hardly aware of the neighbourhood they are part of.

Mo Srinivasan, who lives nearby in Mornington Terrace, told me he was “just a nobody” and that he was grateful to Beryl for having taken the time to get to know him.

Naturally witty, she would drop handwritten notes through the letterbox of her neighbour Monica Wells, one of which read: “Your neglect of Florian’s tub can be likened to feminism run rampant.” The note referred to a plant pot belonging to Monica’s then partner.

She was more than a neighbour to Terry Hargrave, who remains a legend as a social activist in Mornington Crescent although he died 20 years ago.

She was a friend and many a time would support him in his struggles with officialdom on behalf of tenants and single mothers living on the poverty line.

Beryl herself came to Camden Town in the 60s as a single parent with three children. She fed and clothed them with wages from a job at Belloni’s wine warehouse just a few yards from her home in Albert Street.

She told this story in a speech at Terry’s memorial gathering at the old Camden Palace in Mornington Crescent.

I first met her more than 30 years ago in the Mornington Arms along with other regulars – Terry, newly elected Labour councillor John Mills and the actor Denholm Elliott.

Then I met her at Terry’s home, at literary parties, or in Camden High Street.

She was in the best sense of the word, a character, and, perhaps, not all that different from some of the characters she invented for her novels.

If you rang her, I discovered, she wouldn’t pick up the phone but wait until you had left a message, and if she knew you, back would come her call.

I was surprised, in a way, that she had accepted her Damehood, even though she had been recognised as one of our best comedic writers.

I had hoped she would tell whoever the authorities were, in that rasping voice of her, where they could get off. 

Maybe, she simply felt the warmth a title gave her, and the feeling that she had arrived.

But she had arrived long ago in the hearts of all the people she struck up friendships with, ordinary people, real people.

Do they care after all?

DID One Housing group have a sudden change of heart after reading this column last week?

The social housing landlords troubled me last week when I wrote about how, unethically, they planned to auction off a five-floor former care home in Hurdwick Place, Mornington Crescent).

But the property –  used until January as low-rent accommodation for Camden’s mental health patients – was mysteriously withdrawn on the morning of the sale on Monday.

I would hope the property can now be saved for the vulnerable – but don’t hold you’re breath. Another One Housing care home, in nearby Holloway, was sold at the same auction for £440,000.

‘Seeds’ scoop award

HATS off to sculptor Thomas Heatherwick.

The sculptor and his team were behind the UK’s pavilion at this year’s World Expo in Shanghai – and now they have been handed the prestigious Lubetkin award by the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) for their efforts.

Mr Heatherwick’s building, called the Seed Cathedral – we ran an exclusive interview with him about it earlier this year – was quite the belle of the ball.

Now he has a Riba gong for the design, which boasted 60,000 acrylic fronds, each tipped with a seed donated by Kew Gardens.

Well done Thomas, and all your colleagues at the Gray's Inn Road studio.

Don’t build up role...

WANTED: a general manager to oversee Camden’s school re-building programme, flashed the large ad in the Guardian’s job section yesterday (Wednesday).

The successful applicant would be in charge of a £235million of capital work in the borough’s schools.

But, before you sharpen up that CV, isn’t that the re-building programme that Education Secretary Michael Gove shredded to bits (see page 1) on Monday?

The council tells me the ad – which I’d estimate would have cost close to £9,000 according to national paper rate cards – was placed before Mr Gove got to his feet in the House of Commons.