Dr Thomas Stuttaford – a graduate of Brasenose College, former sex columnist on The Times and also an ex-Conservative MP – told me, “in my day considerable skill was needed to pick up a girl in the library. However, by the time my sons were there 30 years later they told me that this was no longer a problem. By then someone only had to catch the eye and exchange a meaningful smile before it became a matter of sliding a note across the desk. Conversely in the early 50s the would-be suitor had to hope for an opportunity to bump into his target at the coffee machine or on the stairs when they were both leaving the library.
“Libraries are an excellent environment in which to embark on such adventures. When Spring is in the air and the sun is shining undergraduates are even more easily bored than usual. It can then become difficult to concentrate on the biochemistry syllabus and the role of the tricarboxcilic cycle in maintaining efficiency in the tiring breast muscles of a flying pigeon when a gorgeous red-head is sitting at a nearby desk.”
Oxford libraries, then, have long been a hotbed for romantic and sexual activites. The rise of the FitFinder website seems only to have encouraged this trend with many of its posts pertaining to sightings over stacks of books. I took a closer look at the phenomenon of love in the libraries – both sexual and romantic – to see what had really changed since Stuttaford’s day.
Some I spoke to planned their experiences in advance, while others claim to seize the coital opportunity as it arises.
One Christ Church fresher and his “lady friend” decided to go at it in a college library only upon having returned from Park End. He recalled, “While our college library has limited opening hours, our Law Library is open all hours, so it was obvious which destination to choose. The one problem is that only lawyers are allowed access to the Law Library.
“But one drunken phone call later, we had secured a lawyer’s fob and were ‘bumping uglies’ in the back room of the law library. My memory is a little hazy, and sadly my inebriated state meant I was unable to ‘finish the deed’, but I believe a chair might have been broken during the act, which took place leaning against a lectern, on a table and sitting on a chair.”
Likewise, one English student, an enthusiastic member of JSoc, was taken by the moment – and her boyfriend – while visiting his Ivy League university. She said, “We were just looking around and hanging in the library. We were in the Theology section and it was quite deserted so I reached out and cupped him gently.
“Normally I’m all about the gradual ‘hand up the thigh’, but in the circumstances subtlety was hardly a priority. Next thing I knew we were ripping each others’ clothes off! It was only when he had me pinned up against the books on Patristics did I notice that my knickers were draped over a reading lamp!”
Of those attempts at library loving that have been planned in advance, some can only be considered abortive. In particular, one undergraduate at LMH had planned a spot of midnight copulation with her then boyfriend in his college library, Mansfield.
Together they had set the alarm for a time when the library would be quieter; but, upon its sounding, they were “too tired” and thought it “too much of a pain to get up and go somewhere.”
One salient feature of all the responses I received is the risk taken by couples who fornicate in libraries. Many have mentioned their fear of being caught by the porters while others were reluctant to talk to me even with the guarantee of anonymity, perhaps dreading the judgement of their peers.
At some colleges, however, kudos is dished out to those who engage in this sort of behaviour. For members of the New College, the library is a firm fixture in the otherwise negotiable ‘New College Seven’. The precise composition of the seven locations in which to have sex is, according to one New College undergraduate, the subject of “some debate”. Some of the mooted venues are the Mound, Cloisters, Bell Tower, Dining Room, Fellows’ Garden, the ‘Harry Potter Tree’ (which is featured in the Warner Brothers films) and the laundry room. The ‘Atkins Challenge’ meanwhile is one for lawyers at Magdalen College – all of whom are members of the Atkins Society. The Atkins Book, held in the college’s law library, is maintained by the society and updated so as to include all gossip pertaining to Magdalen lawyers. The challenge – somewhat predictably – is to have sex on top of the book. Once these duties are discharged, of course, they are noted down in the book for all posterity.
Some I spoke to claim they got intimate in the library just so as they would be able to say that they had. One Oriel undergraduate – who identifies himself as homosexual – reportedly performed cunnilingus on a girl in his college library for precisely this reason. In analysing his achievement, it is claimed, he described the labium as being akin to “a seal slapping its flippers together”. I assume that he derived no sexual pleasure from the experience.
It has been difficult to form a view as to which demographic groups are most likely to indulge in this sort of activity. However, one gay Keble finalist – who is presently spending all too significant portions of his time in the Keble library – described this sort of behaviour as “for the ‘Hets’ (heterosexuals)”.
I did receive a tip-off regarding a tutor and his boyfriend – a student – and two other students. It is alleged that all are now banned from the St Hugh’s library even though the tutor still takes some students at the college. The academic in question, a medic, was contacted for comment but no reply has been received.
While those described above have all engaged in full-on sex acts, many have adopted a more demure, modest or courtly approach to their library-based personal dealings. Indeed, in this past year, the Merton College Upper Library played host to a marriage proposal, which the (soon to be) happy couple commemorated in the Visitor Book.
The Rad Cam has of course long enjoyed a reputation as a good venue for ‘talent’. One undergraduate at a college in North Oxford first encountered her then future boyfriend – a finalist at the time – in the Upper Cam.
She said, “I had been working in the Cam all morning and he had certainly caught my eye. Having returned from lunch, he ran past me on the stairs. When I returned to my desk, there was a note asking – if it wasn’t too strange – if I might have a drink with him. I knew immediately who it was from.
“The note didn’t contain a phone number, but it did have his name at the bottom. When I was back there the next week, he was there again. I felt awkward having ignored him so I decided to contact him via Facebook.”
Having met up, she embarked on a six month relationship with the note-dropper. Asked whether she thought a relationship predicated on shared library habits was a good thing, she replied, “it was just a way of meeting, really”.
“At other universities you might pull in a club. Only in Oxford do you meet a long-term boyfriend in a library.”
A history fresher had a similar experience. He told me, “I always work in the Rad Cam, and often see the same people there every day. There was one girl – a visiting student from America- whose eyes I always caught when I looked up from my laptop. One time, I had got up to find a book, and when I returned I found a note on my laptop with a phone number written on it.
“I knew it was from the American girl, after all, no English girl would be that forward! She was good looking, so I thought to myself, why not? I rang her up, and we went on a date. It did feel slightly odd that we had not met in the conventional way – at a club or a bar or something. The fact that we had met in a library made the whole affair seem particularly charming and very ‘Oxford’.”
The theme of returning to find notes at one’s workstation has proved recurrent in responses received. A former Co-Chair of OULC was also so lucky as to receive a missive declaring him “fit”. Unfortunately, nobody who admits to having left such a note participated in this survey of love in the libraries. Love in the libraries is a growing phenomenon, but even sixty years on from Dr Stuttaford, some are still to get in with the craze.
