What’s on the TARDIS bookshelves?

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Back in September 2015, I was lucky enough to get a look at the Doctor Who set in Cardiff, including the TARDIS. This was just after filming had been completed on The Husbands of River Song. I took loads of photos, but the studio lights were off so it was all a bit dark and the pictures are out of focus. However, looking at them the other day, I realised that there is enough detail to make out the titles of most of the books on the TARDIS bookshelves. Lesson learned – if I ever have another chance, I’ll make sure to get better and more complete shots.

I took photos of two sets of bookshelves, and the books on this one are much less easy to distinguish than the other. On the top shelf, beside the wooden horse, are two volumes of a History of England, Vol II to the left of Vol I, and three volumes of what looks like the collected works of some author (or possibly “Philosophical Works“), Vol VIII, Vol X and Vol VII.

On the middle shelf, I can’t make out the book on the left; the next two appear to be The Holy Bible, Vol I and Vol II; another two that I can’t make out, and then The Holy Bible Vol IV followed by Vol III. The two paperbacks to the left of the skull are Term of Trial, by James Barlow, and a combined Penguin edition of D.H. Lawrence’s short novels St Mawr and The Virgin and the Gipsy. I can’t make out anything of the next two titles, to the right of the skull, but on the spine of the last fully visible book, the middle word is Plays.

On the bottom shelf, the light is too bad to see any titles clearly.

The other bookshelf that I photographed is much clearer, thanks to all of the books being paperbacks and most of them being Penguins. I can identify all 35 books on the top shelf, and 25 of the 30 on the bottom shelf with reasonable guesses at two of the other five.

On the top shelf we have:

  • Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
  • Hard Times, by Charles Dickens
  • Selected Short Stories, by Guy de Maupassant
  • The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy
  • King Solomon’s Mines, by H. Rider Haggard
  • Man and the Vertebrates: 1, by A.S. Romer
  • The Political Economy of Growth, by Paul A. Baran
  • New Horizons in Psychiatry, by Peter Hays
  • Roman Britain (Political History of England 1), by I.A. Richmond
  • The Simplicity of Science, by Stanley D. Beck
  • Language in the Modern World, by Simeon Potter
  • Family Policy, by Margaret Wynn
  • Mister Johnson, by Joyce Cary
  • The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad
  • Elizabeth and Essex, by Lytton Strachey
  • Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake
  • The White Monkey, by John Galsworthy
  • Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
  • Bliss and Other Stories, by Katherine Mansfield
  • The Loved One, by Evelyn Waugh
  • Introduction to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective, by Peter L. Berger
  • Birth Control in the Modern World, by Elizabeth Draper
  • Modern Science and the Nature of Life, by William S. Beck
  • The True Wilderness, by H.A. Williams
  • The Reader’s Guide, edited by Sir William Emrys Williams
  • Organic Chemistry Today, by F.W. Gibbs
  • Maid in Waiting, by John Galsworthy
  • To Let, by John Galsworthy
  • Left Luggage, by C. Northcote Parkinson
  • In Chancery, by John Galsworthy
  • A Little of What You Fancy, by H.E. Bates
  • a second copy of In Chancery, by John Galsworthy
  • A Breath of French Air, by H.E. Bates
  • When the Green Woods Laugh, by H.E. Bates
  • Blood Rights, by Mike Phillips

The lower shelf is more out of focus, but I’m pretty sure that we see:

  • Shardik, by Richard Adams
  • Debbie Go Home, by Alan Paton
  • a second copy of Shardik, by Richard Adams
  • two copies of The Wild Cherry Tree, by H.E. Bates
  • Birds of America, by Mary McCarthy
  • The Group, by Mary McCarthy
  • one that I have difficulty reading but it might be The Innovators by Michael Shanks
  • The Chemistry of Life, by Steven Rose
  • Voters, Parties and Leaders, by Jean Blondel
  • one that I cannot read
  • A High Wind in Jamaica, by Richard Hughes
  • Anna of the Five Towns, by Arnold Bennett
  • Britain on Borrowed Time, by Glyn Jones and Michael Barnes
  • The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
  • Goodbye to All That, by Robert Graves
  • another that I cannot read, though the author’s first name looks like “Henry” or possibly “Hilary”
  • North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell
  • a book by H.E. Bates whose title is unreadable, but it seems very odd that the Doctor would not have a copy of The Darling Buds of May despite having all four of its sequels, so that’s probably it
  • The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James (upside down)
  • two copies of The Cold Moons, by Aeron Clement (the title of the second book is unreadable, but Aeron Clement’s name is clear, and he only wrote one book, so it’s got to be a duplicate)
  • a second copy of The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy
  • Three Plays by John Webster (The White Devil, The Duchess of Malfi, and The Devil’s Law-Case)
  • Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens
  • Owls and Satyrs, by David Pryce-Jones
  • a third copy of Shardik, by Richard Adams
  • a second copy of A Little of What You Fancy, by H.E. Bates
  • The N****r of the Narcissus, Typhoon and Other Stories, by Joseph Conrad
  • finally, one more that I cannot read, though the author’s first name looks like “Henry”.

So: there’s a fair number of classics; a lot of middle-brow twentieth century literature (H.E. Bates, John Galsworthy); very little science fiction or fantasy (apart from Shardik, of which the Doctor has no less than three copies, and two copies of The Cold Moons, a Watership Down-style novel about badgers [edited to add: Rich Horton points out that Gormenghast surely counts too]); lots of well-meaning Penguin 1960s and 1970s sociology; some rather odd popular science books; only two history books (Roman Britain and Elizabeth and Essex); and precisely one book about religion (The True Wilderness, by H.A. Williams), though of course there’s a multi-volume Bible on the other shelf.

Unfortunately I think the Glyn Jones who co-wrote Britain on Borrowed Time is not the same person who wrote The Space Museum. That would have been nicely recursive.

There were more books in the TARDIS than this, as you can see from this screenshot from The Husbands of River Song, but I’m happy to have salvaged some information from my own archives.