Trinity College Dublin begins €90m project to relocate vulnerable books

Restoring and moving 750,000 volumes and ancient manuscripts expected to take five years

It is known as Ireland's front room", where esteemed visitors including the Queen, Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been taken to get a sense of the land of saints and scholars".

Biden, vice-president at the time, was so moved by the atmospherics in the dimly lit, barrel-vaulted hall when he visited Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 2016 that he came back a year later to contemplate the history of its old library, known as the Long Room.