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On All Things Considered this week (Sunday 17 May at 8.30am, repeated Wednesday 20 May at 6.30pm) Roy Jenkins visits St Deiniol's Residential Library at Hawarden in Flintshire.

The Library with over 250,000 books is a popular refuge for theologians, clergy and others to get away from the daily grind, to recharge the batteries, to make the space to think, research and to write - whether it's a book, an essay or even a doctoral thesis.

The Library was the legacy of the Victorian statesman, polymath, and Prime Minister, illiam Gladstone, born 200 years ago. He found time to read and annotate a mere 32,000 of the Library's books. Roy breaks the "No Talking" rule to step inside the oak-panelled Library, to talk to some of the users, and to hear from the warden Peter Francis about the Library's plans to build an Islamic Reading Room.