Catalogues and Short Lists: War and Peace

From our new home in Cecil Court, we have assembled a catalogue shaped by a striking imbalance: books on war are plentiful, while books on peace are harder to come by. Between them stands a first edition of Tolstoy's War and Peace - a reminder of how literature has long wrestled with the tension between conflict and concord. 

War, often presented as a theatre for heroism, reveals in reality only horror. Peace can be easily overshadowed until its absence is most deeply felt. An absence which we are witnessing at this very moment. 

Our catalogue ties these voices together to demonstrate that reading is inherently an act of resistance.