Open House London 2016 (Part 2)

Where as my Open House London Saturday excursions were based exclusively in central London, my plan for Sunday involved travelling many more miles. Crystal Palace was a long way to travel to see a disused pedestrian subway, but the length of the queue when I arrived was an indication of how much interest this curious … Continue reading →

Open House London 2016 (Part 1)

Open House London has become a regular fixture for many of the London historians, museum efininados, exhibition regulars and lovers of all things London whose blogs and Twitter accounts I follow. And this was the year that I finally got to join the party. For those that don’t know, Open House London sees hundreds of buildings across … Continue reading →

REVIEW- Shakespeare In Ten Acts

On one of the exhibitionologist’s first forays into exhibition reviewing, back in 2012, I found myself at an exhibition all about William Shakespeare. Hosted by the British Museum and accompanied by a BBC Radio 4 series, Shakespeare: Staging the World was jam packed full of objects that each, in some way, related to the events, the places and … Continue reading →

REVIEW- Vogue 100: A Century of Style

It appeared on newsagent shelves in September of 1916, and cost a shilling. The first ever issue of British Vogue promised its readers that ‘really and truly, such amazing things are going to happen to you that you would never believe them unless you saw them in Vogue.’  Not bad for a mission statement. And proof … Continue reading →

REVIEW- Celts: Art & Indentity

In 1707 the Welsh linguist and antiquary Edmund Lhuyd published the Archaeologia Brittanica, in which he described the ‘Languages, Histories And Cultures of the Original Inhabitants of Great Britain‘. If it were not for the publication of this book then the British Museum’s new Celts: Art & Identity exhibition probably could not have happened. Were it … Continue reading →

REVIEW- Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution

In the great hall of Christ’s Hospital School in Horsham, West Sussex, there hangs a gigantic painting showing an enthroned King James II receiving the mathematical scholars of the school, painted between 1684 and 1690 by Antonio Verrio. Its impressive scale makes its extensive cast of figures appear practically life-size. Among the great crowd of dukes, earls, soldiers, bishops, courtiers and … Continue reading →

REVIEW- Victorian London in Photographs

When it comes to an exhibition where I am sold on the title alone, then this has to rank right up there. Regular readers of the exhibitionologist will know, photographs -particularly old, scratchy, black-and-white ones- and the history of London constitute two of my special areas of interest. So the Victorian London in Photographs exhibition at the … Continue reading →

REVIEW- Ships, Clocks & Stars

What are the great unsolved problems facing humankind today? Flying without damaging the environment? A cure for paralysis, or dementia? Ensuring the world’s growing population have enough food, and access to clean water? To mark 300 years since the British parliament passed the Longitude Act, Nesta and Innovate UK have launched the Longitude Prize 2014, a £10-million prize fund to … Continue reading →

REVIEW- The First Georgians

Unless you have been living in a cave these past few months, you will of course already know that 2014 marks the three-hundred year anniversary of the start of the Georgian era. The fact that the time has come to give this particular chapter in British history the attention it deserves, after being overlooked for far too long, is … Continue reading →

REVIEW- Britain: One Million Years of the Human Story

There is a question that’s my floating around my head lately, and indeed, a lot of people’s heads lately, be they euro-skeptics at polling stations up and down the country in recent elections, or Scots weighing up the arguments for and against independence as decision day fast approaches. The question is, who, exactly, are the British? A … Continue reading →