I must be feeling unusually grumpy today. Listening to the BBC/British Museum, History of the World in in 100 Objects, which dealt with a bit of the Elgin Marbles, all I could think was what a horrible shower the ancient Athenians sounded like, with their nationalism, showing-off and bullying of other nations. Perhaps, I thought it was a pity ( Read more... )

At the British Museum on Friday, I managed to find a near-likeness to my stone axe and get a look at a small portion of the Staffordshire Hoard. I had rather been hoping for a nice old-fashioned range of glass cases with hundreds of different, carefully-labeled axes, but of course the whole gallery had been rearranged, and there were only one or ( Read more... )

When I was on about yesterday's trip to the British Museum, I forgot to mention the temporary Chinese garden that was set up in the main courtyard to accompany the Terracotta Warriors exhibition earlier in the year. It looks much more successful than the African garden of a couple of years ago, probably because the climate is rather more suitable ( Read more... )

I'm frivolling away like mad in my last three unemployed days. Today I had lunch with the Brother (and niece, unexpectedly) in the nice Turkish restaurant near the British Museum, then we went into the museum. Plan A had been to see the Hadrian exhibition, but the museum was very busy indeed and the queue noisy and enormous, so we opted for a ( Read more... )

I spent most of today at the British Museum, consoling an ex-class-mate for her degree results (low 2:2, rather than high 2:2) and bitching about my own marks. It was rather reminiscent of this time last year, when the two of us mooched around the Greek galleries, morosely kicking the Elgin Marbles (not really) and moaning about not having got ( Read more... )

After the two minutes silence at noon, I rather reluctantly headed for the British Museum, where I had agreed to meet a classmate, because she seemed to need cheering-up. On the way there, I recieved phone calls from two other people in my year, desperate for help with their placements and a call from the people I saw on Tuesday telling me that, ( Read more... )

Made it to the British Museum today, to see the rather disappointing Samurai to Manga exhibition, revisit the Enlightenment exhibition and check out the book sale. The Japanese galleries are shut at the moment for repairs or something, so the only Japanese stuff on display is in a tiny room near the entrance, and consists of eleven carefully- ( Read more... )