British Library

Home to the UK's national library, this austere red-brick colossus opened next to St Pancras railway station in 1998. While it is primarily used for study and research, there are also several exhibition spaces that will appeal to lovers of books, stamps, illustration and the spoken word. Some are used for changing displays on subjects ranging from the use of censuses to the playwright Terence Rattigan (2011 is the centenary of his birth). The prime lure, though, is the permanent Sir John Ritblat Gallery. Here, in a hushed, low-lit atmosphere you can admire a treasure-house of maps, illuminated manuscripts, sacred texts and historical documents that includes the Magna Carta, works by Shakespeare, the score for Handel's Messiah and the diary of the doomed polar explorer Captain Scott. I always find something to marvel at here - most recently the spidery handwriting of Charlotte Bronte penning 'Reader, I married him' in her 1846 novel Jane Eyre.