In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie takes a look at the exceptional life of Kathy Munro. The piece was published on Davie's website on 4 July 2018. Click here to view more of her work.
Some people have to exercise every day. For their spiritual sanity. Some people have to cook breathtaking meals every day. For their creative sanity. Kathy Munro has to collect books. For her innate curiosity.
She says she has collected books since she was a teenager. “I started collecting more seriously when I got married.”
She now has a collection that takes up three rooms, plus an ample passageway. In total, her collection consists of 16 300 books - enough to push anyone over the book ecstasy edge. And she continues to look out for books that interest her.
Walking into her house is an adventure: there are surreptitious boxes of books everywhere, waiting to be catalogued. Antique furniture lives happily with lovely ceramic collections and comfortable rugs and well-sat-on chairs and sofas. Books sit contentedly in glass cabinets.
Fortunately she has a spacious three-roomed flat below her house that accommodates her collection, built for her by her husband, Keith, “for his sanity”, she laughs. The walls are lined from floor to ceiling with books. The passageway is lined in the same way. She's brought in stand-alone bookshelves for extra storage space, and laments that she has no more space for books. The only places where there are no bookshelves are the...
