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Meeting Henry VIII

  • May 26, 2009
  • Rated 4 of 5 by tvordj from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia
Meeting Henry VIII

When I heard that the British Library would be hosting a special exhibition on Henry VIII, curated by expert Dr. David Starkey, I knew I could absolutely not miss it! I pre-booked tickets online and we went the morning after we arrived in London from Brussels. The exhibit was really marvellous! There were 500 year old documents, books with stunning illuminations, paintings, drawings and a few artifacts. There were also some interactive displays and apparently some sort of holograms of Henry that I completely failed to see, though Graham did.

The audio accompaniment was narrated by Starkey himself. It was really amazing to see all these papers and letters that survived so long, some in King Henry's own handwriting. Seeing the documents that sent Anne Boleyn to her death or the divorce decree from Katherine of Aragon, things like that, just makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up when you think of how things changed because of it.

The British Library is housed in a newish building, moved from the British Museum. It's next to St. Pancras and King's Cross train stations in the north part of central London, also a short distance from Euston station.

The British Library also has a permanent exhibit of their "treasures", rare books and papers, original documents and books, such as Captain Cook's diaries, a copy of the Magna Carta, the sheet music for Handel's Messiah, etc. This exhibit is free.

They usually do have several temporary exhibits like this in the library, some larger than others and some you might need to prebook, some you can buy tickets at the door. They have a cafe and they have the lovely reading room.

The website has an online shop and galleries and information about all the exhibits.

From journal London, Manchester and afield

Editor Pick

The British Library - English Lit

  • February 28, 2009
  • Rated 5 of 5 by Liam Hetherington from Manchester, United Kingdom
I’m actually a little bit ashamed that, nerd as I am, I had never before visited the British Library. Hived off from the collections of the British Museum, a new building on Euston Road between the major rail termini of Euston, Kings Cross & St Pancras stations it must be the easiest attraction in London for anyone from outside London to see. It is predominantly an academic institute, busy with students and researchers checking in bags and picking up reading cards to consult the 19 million volumes in the stacks. However there are several display spaces to exhibit some of the Library’s more precious and historic artefacts. For instance, there was a small exhibit celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. Having attended the same college at university as Darwin, and having just read a very interesting book about him (‘This Thing Of Darkness’ by Harry Thompson) I found this pretty interesting. I didn’t get a chance to browse ‘The Sound And The Fury’, an exhibition on public speaking featuring some of the Library’s collection of audio recordings. Just this week it has been in the news that they are to start a new major exhibition on Henry VIII, having secured the loan of a love letter from the king to Anne Boleyn from – of all places – the Vatican archives.

The main treasures of the collection are on display in the darkened Sir John Ritblat Gallery. In the literature section you start off with an early manuscript copy of Beowulf before pressing on to 16th century Shakespeare folios, Jane Austen’s diary, handwritten notes by Joseph Conrad (one of my favourite authors), and a scrawled poem by Sylvia Plath among other important documents. Adjoining it the Music section contains exhibits from Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks, . Mozart’s wedding certificate, Beethoven’s tuning fork, and handwritten lyrics for several Beatles tracks such as Lennon’s ‘Help!’ and Mccartney’s ‘Yesterday’. There are aged maps of the world and pages from Leonardo da Vinci’s notebook, written back-to-front by the great man himself between his sketches. Other historical documents include the log book of HMS Victory from the Battle of Trafalgar noting the death of Admiral Nelson at the moment of victory, and the last page of Captain Scott’s diary. General Haig’s April 1918 Order Of The Day ("With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end") is also exhibited.From their own archives they have a reference letter asking for a library card. Despite the false name used, this was actually from a certain Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin.

There is a printed Gutenberg Bible, but it is not as outstanding as the Library’s collection of illuminated and sacred texts. These range throughout all of the world’s major religions. Certainly works that caught my eye include an exquisite Qur’an made for Sultan Baybars of Cairo, and Jewish texts in Provencal dialect hailing from the Comtat Venaissin in southern France, where they were more-or-less protected by the Papal authorities. However, obviously it is Christian works that take centre stage. Chief amongst these must be the exquisite Lindisfarne Gospel. It boggles the mind to think just how long it must have taken Eadfrith to illustrate and colour this massive book. Still, I suppose there wasn’t a great deal else to do in 7th-8th century monasteries stuck out on islands off the bleak coast of Northumbria!

Less visually impressive, but almost definitely more important historically would be the Codex Sinaiticus, carted off from the Monastery of St Catherine at the foot of Mt Sinai. This is a 4th century copy of the Greek Bible and the British Museum now holds 347 pages after it paid £100,000 raised by public subscription in 1933 to acquire them from the Soviet government. The question of how these pages ended up in Russia at all is much more dubious – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Sinaiticus for details. Regardless, as I myself saw on a visit to the monastery in November 2007, the monks really want the Codex back!

Even more precious though – to a Brit at any rate – is Magna Carta. Kept in a separate side-room this document dates from 1215 and is the basis of English law. Magna Carta (never the Magna Carta unless you want to be laughed at by constitutional historians) was consented to by King John under duress to halt a baronial rebellion. To be honest, it is less a sweeping political tract then a shopping list of individual grievances – the placement of fishing traps on the rivers Thames and Medway for instance. Out of its 60-odd clauses only three remain legally valid today – the freedom of the Church, the rights and liberties of the City of London, and the right to due process in law. Reading between the lines, it set down in writing the notions of habeas corpus, and that the monarch, whatever their royal status, was subject to the rule of law in the same as any other individual. Essentially Magna Carta set a precedent for limiting the divine right of kings almost six centuries before the French had to break out the guillotine. Of course, after attaching his seal to the document John immediately was on the hotline to the Pope to get it annulled, but that is neither here nor there.

Only four copies of the original 1215 Magna Carta survive – one at Salisbury Cathedral, one at Lincoln Cathedral, and two on display in the British Library. In display here on my visit was a fire-damaged copy originating from Dover Castle. A better preserved original was downstairs in a major exhibition on the evolution of Britain’s freedoms and rights entitled ‘Taking Liberties’. There are warnings on the posters: ‘In some countries you would not have the right to visit this exhibition…’ This was a very interesting, interactive gallery. It traced the journey through the UK’s political evolution by looking at various themes such as the rule of law, the primacy of parliament, the right to vote, the union of the disparate countries that form the UK, human rights and freedom of speech and belief. There are recorded vox pops from politicians, lawyers, philosophers, activists and members of the public alongside historical artifacts. These artifacts include the aforementioned magna Carta, Charles I’s death warrant, the Bill of Rights and Act of Toleration from 1689, 1706’s Articles of Union, the 1832 Great Reform Act, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which celebrated its 50th birthday last year, and all the way up to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. But as I say, it is interactive. On entrance you are given a barcoded wristband. As you progress through you can scan this to ‘log in’ at terminals and give your thoughts on political issues such as thr role of the monarchy, whether it is ever right to break a law to change a law, DNA databases, the right to die, and censorship. You can then compare your responses to those of other visitors. Rather to my shock, I found that I was the not the pinko Guevara I had always seen myself as being, but rather centrist. I am not as far over on the Freedom versus Control axis than I expected myself to be. In fact, checking my results revealed that out of the 21 questions I voted with the majority (or at least a plurality) of voters on 13 occassions (and opted for the least popular of the four options only three times). But then, you would assume that people coming to a research institution and paying attention to an exhibition on the evolution of political rights would probably be students and / or have a more libertarian bent, thereby skewing the data somewhat.
Check out their rather snazzy website http://www.bl.uk/takinglibertiesinteractive/ - warning, depending on where you are in the world access may be blocked!

The British Library has something for everyone. For the scholars among you there are great documents and works of historical importance. For the activists there is the opportunity to explore your rights and liberties. How fortunate London is to have a place like this.

Entry is free, as are the cloak rooms. It is open daily from 9.30 until 18.00 (until 20.00 on Tuesdays, but only 11.00-17.00 on Sundays). Nearest tube stations are Euston (Northern and Victoria lines) and Kings Cross-St Pancras (Northeern, Victoria, Piccadilly, Circle, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City lines). Images of many of their rare and precious (and, let’s not forget, beautiful) books and documents can be seen on their website – www.bl.uk.

From journal The A-Muse-ment Arcades: Culture on the Cheap

Editor Pick

British Library

  • April 22, 2008
  • Rated 5 of 5 by callen60 from Ozarks, Missouri
British Library

Near Euston Station, and adjacent to the newly renovated and resuscitated St. Pancras Station, sits one of London’s best places to visit. The British Library is the UK equivalent of the Library of Congress, but only received its own building in 1998. Until then, it was housed in the British Museum, which cramped both institutions.

The new building is about a mile straight north of the British Museum, and its size makes it hard to imagine how it could ever have been relegated to sharing space. The website claims it was the largest building 20th century building constructed in the UK, but for most visitors, it hides its size well. You enter through a gate off Euston Street, with ‘British Library’ repeated three teams in wrought iron, which seemed an appropriate entrance for a building full of texts. In the courtyard, a large bronze Newton crouches, measuring some small piece of the world. It’s a strange turn on an image from Blake, who hated Newton’s worldview (which, as an alchemist, was not quite what we think of as scientific). I thought it was an odd image when I first saw it in 2001: I envision Newton looking outward at the world and the universe, not peering at the ground. Understanding that the sculpture is an insult turned into an heroic image (as noted in this this insightful post) makes the pose understandable, if not the sculptor’s thinking—or the Library’s thinking in making this highly ambiguous statement a centerpiece of the building.

Inside, a large lobby opens to a set of stairs. At the top sits a four-story glass room that seems suspended inside the building. It appears to house rare books, with catwalks around the exterior aside the glass walls. In front, on your left, is a statue of Shakespeare, and an announcement that HM Queen Elizabeth dedicated the building. The excellent bookstore is directly on your left, and in between this and the Queen is the entrance to the Sir John Ritblat Gallery, which holds the "Treasures of the British Library."

‘Treasures of the world’ is more like it. Collected in this modest space is a comprehensive look at texts, maps and cultures from around the globe. Of course, It is the British Library, so there’s no shortage of authors and artifacts from the Isles: Shakespeare is well represented, with a copy of the First Folio, the Sonnets, and his mortgage displayed on the left of what’s likely to be the first case you encounter in the gallery. On the right are letters from by QE I, responding to the strong suggestions of many peers that she find a husband and ensure a clean line of succession. (She vows to do so; what might have happened if she’d kept her word?) Behind you are an amazing collection of volumes from English literature: manuscripts from Austen and Bronte, Hardy and Conrad, and—most impressive to me—John Milton’s Commonplace book, opened to pages where he makes notes and ruminates on the nature of kingship (would this have been written if Elizabeth had married?).

In other displays are sacred texts, including a Gutenberg Bible. The 8th century Lindisfarne Gospels were unfortunately rotated off display, to return in October. Also missed was William Tyndale’s Bible, the first in English. But leaves of the Codex Sinaiticus, the earliest complete Christian Bible, are also here. The Diamond Sutra, a 9th century Buddhist document from China, is likely the world’s oldest printed object.

At the back, there’s a separate room for the Magna Carta, which is more of a hallway. The lights are lower in here, to preserve the documents. Unfortunately, the 1215 version was off display during our visit, but other less historical copies are there, along with a good exhibit on what the Carta is (and is not). Particularly interesting to me was a copy of a papal bull denouncing the Magna Carta.

The exhibits continue on into science with copies of Galileo’s masterpiece Sidereus Nuncius, Newton’s Principia, and a letter from Newton to his archenemy Robert Hooke (OK, so he had more than one archenemy). Da Vinci, Harvey and others are also represented, along with a letter to Igo author Idler's hero, Alfred Russel Wallace, from that other evolutionary thinker, C. Darwin.

In the music cases are manuscripts from Bach, Mozart and others, and a libretto from phileasfogg’s dream concert, the first performance of Handel’s Messiah. My teen Beatles fan was engrossed by the dozen or so items on loan from the Fab Four, including what looked like handwritten compositions or lyrics for In My Life, Ticket to Ride, Help, and Yesterday. She didn’t know this was coming, but it was one of the Beatles stops we’d hoped to make during our trip.

We all got so engrossed here that we nearly missed the other highlight of our first day in London: a London Walks outing on Harry Potter. If we hadn’t scurried out to catch the Tube at Euston Station, we could easily have spent another hour here. As it was, we only lured one of our kids out of the bookstore with the possibility of a second visit, which unfortunately won’t come to pass until the next trip.

From journal London, Free and Easy

Editor Pick

The New British Library

  • April 6, 2003
  • Rated 4 of 5 by Jenn966 from Hamilton, New Jersey

On my first visit to London, I just missed seeing the Magna Carta and other precious historical, literary, and religious works. They’d been removed from their home in a wing of the British Museum, but weren’t yet on display at the New British Library. With one thing and another, I missed the NBL on subsequent visits, but was determined to get there this time.

Although the architecture of the building is relatively modern, its brick-covered exterior blends well with the heavily-ornamented St. Pancras train station standing nearby. Tall iron gates funnel visitors off Euston Road into a large plaza that leads to a conference center and the library itself. Entering the library building, you step into an expansive marble lobby that rises six floors. In the center, some of the library’s stacks can be seen through glass walls. To your left is a bookshop, which offers a variety of books, videos and posters. Up a few steps from the shop is the entrance to the The John Ritblatt Gallery, where Treasures of the British Library is the permanent exhibition. The treasures on display here might more properly be termed "Treasures of World."

The Magna Carta is, after all, not just the document that brought a degree of democracy to Britain, but established a framework of shared government powers in use in many countries today. Religious works on display include not just the beautiful Lindisfarne Gospels and copies of both the Guttenberg and St. James bibles, but the Golden Haggadah, a 15th-century Sephardic depiction of the Passover story, ancient Hindu and Buddhist texts, and fragments of Coptic and Ethiopian Christian manuscripts.

The worlds of literature and music are covered in the Ritblatt gallery, as well. Jane Austen’s writing desk, a handwritten draft of a Bronte novel, and the only document known to be in William Shakespeare’s hand can be seen. Hymn books from monasteries and two works related to Handel’s Messiah, a libretto from its premiere performance, and a score marked in the composer’s hand, are displayed. One of my favorites: a quartet laid out in "table" form. Each of the four parts is written in a different direction on a single sheet of paper. The sheet was laid on a table around which the musicians would sit, each able to read his own part easily.

From the gallery exit, you can go down a flight of stairs to see special exhibitions and a room containing early printing and bookbinding equipment.

A café and restaurant are located at the back of the lobby, behind the glass column. Over 1,000 cases containing stamps from all over the world are located in the walls in this area.

Access to the Ritblatt Gallery and most special exhibitions is free. Guided tours are available for a fee. Information on the tours, and on reaching the library via public transportation is here. Opening hours are: weekdays, 09:30 to 18:00, until 20:00 on Tuesday; Saturday, 09:30 to 17:00 and Sunday and British public holidays, 11:00 to 17:00.

From journal Give Thanks for London!

Editor Pick

"Beowulf, anyone?" - the New British Library

  • March 3, 2001
  • Rated 4 of 5 by actonsteve from London, United Kingdom
If you are the kind of traveller that likes poring over old parchment or turning the pages of tomes that are hundreds of years old - then this attraction is for you. When the national collection of books grew too massive for the library at the old British museum a new building was designed at St. Pancras, only ten minutes walk away. At the time it was the most expensive building in Britain costing 500 million to build and taking over ten years to construct. It now stretches over 100,000 square metres and it's basement, which is the deepest in London has space for over 12 million books. This place is a bookworm's fantasy.

It can be reached by walking along the Euston Road from either Kings Cross or Euston Tube stations. Or by Number 73 bus from Trafalgar Square. Before you enter is a giant piazza dominated by a Paolozzi's bronze statue of Newton with compass plotting the immensity of the universe. Inside is the great research library (you need to prove you are there for research to use this), an excellent bookshop, cafeteria, and a six-story glass tower containing the collection of books from George III which was given to the nation. But the best thing about the BL is the free exhibitions. To the left as you enter is the John Riblat gallery - an absolute gem. Under high-tech conditions are the most precious books in the world. The oldest surviving manuscript - the priceless 'Diamond Sutra' is on display from 638 AD. Also under glass cases are Buddhist and Hindu texts, Gutenberg bibles, gilt inlaid Qu'run's and Korans and the 'Lindesfarne' gospels. A room to one side allows you to handle these through interactive television screens.

You can wander around viewing Henry VII's maps of Calais, Nelson's battleplans for Trafalgar, the diaries of Babur and the scribblings of Newton and Michaelangelo. My favourite are the notes of Charles Babbage to the Duke of Wellington trying to get him interested in his new calculating machine (computer). Nearby is Jane Austens writing desk and papers from the Brontes, Wordsworth, Bach, Elgar, not to mention Beethovens tuning stick. And once you have seen the three Magna Carta's it is time for Shakespeare's mortgage and original lyrics and records by the Beatles. One seeing these my father said "You mean to say those records I have at home belong in a museum - Lord, I feel old..."

From journal London - Cultural Powerhouse of Europe

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