British Library, 2021

July 28th we trudged up the 4 blocks to Euston Avenue and the British Library. We're old enough to have visited it when it was still part of the British Museum. The new, purpose-built building opened in 1998, on the site of the former Midlands Railway Town Goods Yard and Potato Market (!), and contains the ever-expanding collection of 200+ million items of every description. Unless you're a researcher, the main thing to see is the Sir John Ritblat Gallery, which contains originals of many of the world's great books, manuscripts, maps, and more. Also a sizeable display on the history of printing and books. It's required visiting if you're a literary or library or intellectual type. As usual, I took too many pix but will show only a few here. One of the world's great institutions.

As it appeared in 2016

As it appeared last week: proof that history repeats itself, or
that I take the same pix of the same things from the same angles,
etc.

Needs no introduction

Letter in verse from Jane Austen to her brother; on her writing
desk

Very early Charlotte Bronte notebook; the book is no more than
postcard size...really, really tiny handwriting...because they did
not want the grown-ups reading their stuff!

Durer sketchbook

Papal Bull annulling the Magna Carta; as if...

Actual (copy of; there were several) Magna Carta

Lindisfarne Gospel, c. 700

Manuscript of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks, 1749;
because we're living on Handel St; alas, my pix of the Beatles'
Yesterday did not turn out, nor did my shot of a manuscript
left by 8 year old W. A. Mozart during his London tour in the
1760s...everybody just knew he was going to make it big...

Consanguinity tree, England, c. 1200

Gutenburg Bible, c. 1455

Codex Sinaiticus, 4th century; earliest complete copy of the New
Testament

Map of Europe and Mediterranean, c. 1550; the map is about
2ft by3 ft; more extremely tiny handwriting

Christopher Wren's plans for the Great Fire Monument

A letter from David Hume denouncing Rousseau...they had a
falling out

The chained book bench, as it was last week, a family favorite

And as it was in 2016, with three generations of readers

But wait there's more department: outside in the piazza is Eduardo
Paolozzi's over-sized sculpture Newton: after William Blake; the
posture has always intrigued/amused me...

Above is Blake's 1805 print Newton; interestingly, Blake hated
science, and Newton, condemning him especially along with
Bacon and Locke [from the Wikipedia article]; so why would
the British Library place this unloving sculpture of the nation's
greatest scientist at its entrance?

Oh well...right down the street, next door neighbor to the Library,
is the Francis Crick Institute, Europe's largest biomedical research
center; science wins

Museum Of London, 2

Continuing our day at the Museum of London and environs...

Happy days are here again...for Royalists...Charles II parades into
London

Not so happy days, a Plague and a Fire

As noted earlier, I have a new theory of who was
responsible for the Fire: to be announced soon

Growth of science and industry

At about this point Vicki and I both are beginning to feel crushed
by all the history and art and architecture of the past few weeks...

A bit of reform history...still waiting too

First Black Cabs

Small girl's dress worn on the occasion of Queen
Elizabeth's coronation; note London skyline printed
along the bottom

London as entertainment and fashion center...remember searching
for these, Rachel?

We sort of sped through the last bits...one can only absorb so 
much...

Now outside, we walked past St. Paul's, and then to the river

And across the Millennial Bridge

Taking in the views and all the continuing new construction

Past The Globe, where we were groundlings on one visit

Attempted artsy-fartsy depiction

More growth and change and avant-garde architecture to rival
any other place we've seen

We had lunch in the shadow of the Tate Modern
(we visited a few days later); aka as the Bankside
Power Station

I love contrasts; here we are crossing the Blackfriars
Bridge; Queen Victoria and the Shard

Thus: another intense day!

Museum Of London, 1

We made it eventually to the Museum of London and spent most of the touring day there. It is a fine museum, particularly fine in the pre-historic and Roman bits, and provides a continuous and vivid picture of the history of this dynamic city. London is a city of museums, and much of what is at the city museum is on loan from elsewhere. There are riches to spare. And already there is planning for a new and larger city museum. Comparisons inevitably arise with Paris, and its Carnavalet. We saw the Carnavalet in 2014, also with Rachel (https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2014/06/musee-carnavalet.html), one stop on a very busy day. It also is impressive, though in different ways. It occurs to me the two museums well reflect the two very different cities, the Carnavalet with far more paintings and sculptures and such, and a marvelous setting, itself historic, in the Hotel Carnavalet and the Hotel Peletier, in the Marais. Make of that what you will. Hopefully, we'll visit the Carnavalet again in a month or so.

Not sure what's in the black Camembert...most of the museum is

upstairs in adjacent buildings

Not so long ago, Britain was not an island; it was
part of Europe, the Thames a tributary of the Rhine;
wooly mammoths, rhinoceros, and other big game
roamed the land; here's a mammoth's foot bones

Temperature fluctuations over the past half 500,000 years; ice
ages, big melts, seas rising and falling; today we're in a melt,
and Britain is an island

Tools, stones and bones; humans have arrived

A large hall of pre-historic artifacts and displays

The kind of local construction the Romans found
when they arrived, 1st century BCE

Nice model of the port of Londinium in Roman times, roughly
the first four centuries CE

Helpful model of the Roman garrison

What a more prosperous Romano-Briton's living room might
have looked like

London, about 250 CE; the bridge across the Thames has been
in place for some time, but the city is already in decline

Out the window, bits of the old city wall, the lowest parts of which
are the Roman wall

A few centuries pass, London is nearly abandoned,
but then King Alfred rebuilds the city and calls it
"Lundenburg"

More centuries pass, the Normans are now firmly in control,
London is their capital, and they build the great St. Paul's
gothic church, modeled here; at the time one of the largest
churches in Christendom; destroyed in the Great Fire

Growing prosperity as the Middle Ages become the Renaissance;
here, a Wagon and Tun, 1554; the wagon crawled up and down 
the table, spraying rose water for dinner guests to wash their hands
with...

Model of The Rose, a theater of the Elizabeth Age

A map of the city before the Great Fire, in copper;
of 17 leaves, only three are known 

And they were used by Dutch painters...