This article is an attempt to chart the chronology of a Library crisis and rescue, a crisis which attracted much attention from the national and professional press. It is very much a personal account. Others would tell it differently. It is an unashamedly partial account. Partial in both senses. There are some aspects of the story I do not know. I did not share in all the deliberations of the great and good and of the mercenary, muddled and misguided, which brought the Library to the brink of disaster and back and then to Cambridge. It is partial, because I find it difficult to be objective about this Library, which has always had the capacity to rouse strong emotions in its custodians and users - which is one of the reasons for its survival.