Thomas Coram and the Foundling Hospital
On the railings outside the Coram charity’s HQ in Bloomsbury is a white children’s mitten. Or, rather, what appears to be a child’s mitten, because […]
museums
30 Years of Warfare: from the Nery Gun to the V2
Go down into the central atrium of the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth, and one of the first things you see is the ‘Nery Gun’. […]
The D Day Story and the Overlord Embroidery
Portsmouth’s D Day Story is a small museum on the seafront a literal stone’s throw from the Tudor castle at Southsea (where Henry VIII watched […]
The Ashcroft Gallery at the Imperial War Museum
One of the lesser-visited galleries in the IWM is on Level 5 (the top floor), the Lord Ashcroft collection of Victoria Crosses and George Crosses […]
Glorious Chaos: Sir John Soane’s Museum
Sir John Soane (1753-1837), most famously the architect of the Bank of England and Dulwich Picture Gallery, was the son of a bricklayer who rose […]
The Last of the WW2 Big Ships – HMS Belfast
A visit to HMS Belfast on a chilly, late January Tuesday gave me the ship almost to myself, the first time I’d visited this floating […]
The Nereid Monument in the British Museum
On one’s way to the Parthenon Gallery one walks through Room 17 of the British Museum and there, on the right, is what appears to […]
All Hail the Sacred Dung Beetle!
When Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, sold his collection of antiquities to the British Museum in 1816, the museum acquired not only his once […]
Contemplating the Infinite in the British Museum
In Douglas Adams’s Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, the Total Perspective Vortex gives “one momentary glimpse of the size of the entire infinity of creation […]
The Mithraeum: The City of London’s Roman Temple
Under the Bloomberg European headquarters building in the City is the ‘London Mithraeum’, a glimpse into an obscure part of Roman London. Obscure not just […]