On discovering it was written as a play, in three Acts, I asked myself - should I bother? I'm so glad I did because it wasn't long before it started reading just like a novel. Excitement builds early and by Act Three I was in a reading frenzy, couldn't put it down, just had to know where all the trails ended. Stephen Poliakoff tells the story of a vast collection of photographs, millions of them, containing images of everything from the bizarre, curious, ordinary, exceptional, beautiful and shocking. This amazing Collection is about to be broken up and sold, possibly even destroyed as a result of the building's new, American owners who have arrived to redevelop the site into a New Age School. Set in London we meet the dedicated, eccentric group of librarians who administer over the collection without the aid of computers. They don't need computers! They manage to catalogue, file and retrieve photos almost instantly because of an astounding ability to remember what's filed where and where every file lives. I can't say much more without given away the storyline but what an incredible story of connections it is, uncanny would not be too strong a word. ( )

The scripts of one of the best television series ever made. ( )