I said in yesterday’s post that I was able to cross off not one but two items from my bucket list. This was because we managed to squeeze in a trip to the British Library on our way back from Highgate Cemetery.
The British Library is the largest of its kind in the world holding over 200m items in its collection. It is not, however, somewhere you’d simply pop in to pickup the latest Colleen Hoover or a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone, although they do have copies.
Just inside the entrance to what is, quite frankly, an ugly building and quite jarring next to the grand St. Pancras station, is a small exhibition called “Treasures of the British Library” containing some highlights from the archives.
The Treasures
As you enter the very first thing you notice is just how dark it is in the room. I guess that these low light levels are there to help preserve the records on display, many of which are very old. Based on this experience you can see why photos in frames at home fade!
Items on display, and they are all paper documents and books, are grouped together thematically. For example there are sections on:
- Music
- Religion
- Printing
- History
And in each section was a selection of interesting documents both old and new. For example, there was a centuries old Greek tablet showing a schoolboys homework along side Michael Palin’s handwritten script for the Spanish Inquisition. Further along would be historical documents such as the Magna Carta and Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
What I found fascinating beyond the documents themselves was how and when the items had been acquired. The earliest date I could find for an acquisition was labelled “Gifted to nation in 1702”. Other items had been purchased specifically for the collection.
As it happens the British Library didn’t exist in 1702 and wasn’t actually formed until 1973. Prior to that the library contents were held by the British Museum which was established in 1753.
The British Library and its work is funded directly by HM Government Department for Culture, Media & Sport and so comes direct from taxation. It’s easy to forget just how far your tax £’s go when the headlines concentrate on the NHS, education, defence etc. Whether you think that it’s a good use of public funds is another matter but personally I do.
If you want to see just where your money goes then pop along to the British Library and take a look at the treasures on display – it’s a permament exhibition.
