Napoléon et l'Europe
Several newspapers featured a story last week about the National Maritime Museum loaning Nelson's Trafalgar uniform to, shock horror, the French. The uniform will be loaned for the first time to the Musée de l'Armée in Paris for their forthcoming exhibition, Napoléon et l'Europe.
The Guardian quotes Quintin Colville, curator of naval history at the NMM, as follows:
"It is absolutely an icon of British history and I don't think it has a competitor," he said. "It's never been loaned by the NMM before and hasn't left these shores since it returned from Trafalgar with Nelson's body, so, as you can imagine, every possible precaution has been taken."
According to Colville, very few items possess the same transportive power. "Because of the presence of the hole left by the musket ball, it does capture a split-second in time and it takes you straight back to that moment at the heart of an extraordinarily ferocious and all-consuming battle," he said. "Anyone who walks past the uniform is struck by that."
The Napoléon et l'Europe exhibition runs from 27th March - 14th July at Hotel National des Invalides and will feature 280 artefacts from 56 European institutions. While the Trafalgar uniform is on diaplay in Paris, it will be replaced at the NMM by Nelson's full dress uniform, and, on its return later in the year, it will "form the centrepiece of the NMM's new Nelson, Navy, Nation gallery, which charts the Royal Navy's role in 18th-century British history."