Bookshelf Beloveds

When I was planning this episode and writing up the script, I began to look at bookshelves online.

And by this, I don't mean that I was hitting up Ikea.

But rather I was trying to look at the iconic bookshelves, you know, the things that you think about when someone says books or library to you.

And if I'm honest, my heart and my head went straight to one place in particular.

An early 90s Disney classic, Beauty and the Beast was the third highest grossing film of that year.

The first was Terminator 2 and the second Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.

Not a bad sort of trio, is it really? Out of interest, I did look up where Beauty and the Beast stands in terms of gross now, and it is the seventh highest grossing traditionally animated film of all time.

The Lion King, in fact, fans, is number one.

Now, Beauty and the Beast isn't really about bookshelves and libraries.

We know this, of course, right? It's about fabulous song and dance numbers and the absolute trauma that all of these characters will realise the moments that the credits end.

It's about love.

And I think this is where the bookshelves and the library come in.

The Beast wants to do something big, something meaningful for Belle.

And so he gives her the library.

He gives her himself, really.

And the library is big, glamorous, beautiful, but it's overwhelming and deliberately so.

This is the promise of a future that Belle is yet to realise, a world she is yet to discover.

In giving it to her, the beast proves that he believes in her and what she is yet to become, that he wants all of that to happen.

This is his declaration of love.

Bookshelves hold knowledge and power and gifting them to others, that permission to look and to touch and to read the things that matter to you in the hope that they will matter to them.

It's love, isn't it? Pure and simple.