Observant readers may have noticed that the Jubliee Library recently opened in Brighton. The Royal Institute of British Architects has declared it one of the region's outstanding buildings.

From the hype, one would gather the library is more wonderful than the ancient library of Alexandria, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and London's British Library.

One assumes that a library is a place where free thought is paramount and debate encouraged. However, Pauline Scott-Garrett, Brighton and Hove City Council's assistant director of heritage, is reported (The Argus, July 25) as telling a group of residents campaigning about what they (and many other people) see as shortcomings in the new library, that she was "drawing a line under this".

She then asked them to leave what most of us thought was a public square. She was also reported as saying it was private land which belonged to a private company and that the campaigners had no right to be there.

After all the hoo-haa about the library being part of a new cultural quarter in Brighton, it seems a public servant can summarily expel people from the square on her whim.

In view of the high-handedness of the council, as demonstrated by their spokesman, who claimed staff found the "one-man campaign against them so tiresome".

I hope the library has a section on oppressive regimes. At least its catalogue shows more than a dozen copies of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

-Colin Bennett, Hove