Sydney’s biggest reader: Dorothy has borrowed 14,000 library books in 69 years

Dorothy McGillivray, aged 96, devours books. Rapidly.

Liverpool City Library records only go back to 2007, but it is estimated she has borrowed 14,000 books since she became a member after arriving from England in 1952.

No Mills & Boon though (she says she’d put a match to them), and no novels, thank you.

Mrs McGillivray doesn’t need large print and she likes books on the royal family (she was a £10 Pom), history and archaeology. She is, quite possibly, the best-read woman in town. And she’s never had a library fine.

Dorothy McGillivray, 96, from Liverpool, with librarian Mary Bush.Credit: Wolter Peeters

The day we speak Liverpool librarian Mary Bush arrives at Mrs McGillivray’s nursing home to deliver 10 new titles and take away two baskets of books.

“From as far back as I can remember I’ve had my nose stuck in a book,” recalls Mrs McGillivray, who trained as a nurse in England.

“I loved English and at inter-schools competitions I did win many books. I remember someone up the back saying, ‘Oh, not her again.’ Now I just read what Mary brings but none of it is fiction.”

What Dorothy McGillivray is currently reading:

The Prince who would be King by Sarah Fraser

Beyond Alice by Tanya Heaslip

Pitch Battles: Sport, Racism and Resistance by Peter Hain and Andre Odendaal

Victoria: The Queen by Julia Baird.

Mrs McGillivray says she reads all her books thoroughly. “I remember my husband once said to me: ‘You couldn’t possibly have read that book in that time, it’s so heavy.’ He asked me a couple of questions out of it and I had the answers.

“My great-granddaughter Aria in Baltimore in America is like me, she was reading when she was about 3½. When she comes over here we go to Kmart, and she makes a beeline for the books.”

Small print: Inside the Randwick mobile library lending service c1955.

Mrs McGillivray’s daughter Ann Star is visiting. Has her mother read Fifty Shades of Grey? “Oh, no, no. That would be improper of my mother. No, no, no. My mother hasn’t changed at all in the 69 years that she has been here. Imperial Leather soap, anything like that is the only way. Even my brother can pick her up only in his Jaguar.”

Home reader librarian Mary Bush is always on the lookout for titles that would interest Mrs McGillivray. “We have some big readers here but I don’t think anybody can beat Dorothy,” she says. “I have been delivering books to Dorothy’s house and now her nursing home in Liverpool for 14 years. I share my readers’ grief and pain when something happens to them - this is the passion of my life.”

Other voracious readers emerged in Library and Information Week which ends today. Author Peter O’Brien, who wrote Bush School, spoke at Randwick City Library about how he was an early adopter of the council’s mobile library service.

“I joined in about 1948 when I was 10. It was a magic time, in the wheeled treasure trove of books, all waiting for me to claim them as mine, if only for a week at a time. I was able to begin an engagement with ‘adult’ novels - such as those by Dickens. It was the start of a lifelong love of literature and a lifetime affair with libraries.”

Rod Leonarder, 65, who worked in education, has been a member of a public library since the age of four. He and his wife Jill are members of Lindfield library and they read five to 10 books a week. Leonarder, who reads Nordic Noir, Scottish crime and books about Donald Trump, says reading brought the couple together.

“Jill and I kept intersecting in the book shop at uni when we were there. Through our love of reading we kept meeting each other there and in the library.”

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