Neat enough for Pepys: Magdalene college Cambridge’s inventive new library

The famous diarist’s dedicated building, left to his Cambridge alma mater, could not be altered. So architect Níall McLaughlin created a magical solution“My delight is in the neatness of everything,” wrote Samuel Pepys in his diary in 1663, “and so cannot be pleased with anything unless it be very neat, which is a strange folly.”He was referring in part to the fastidious organisation of his magnificent collection of books. By the time of his death in 1703 he