Mon Carnet de Voyage

London. Big red buses, milky tea and minding gaps.

I couldn’t come all this way to France, without a quick weekend over to London, so, taking advantage of our long weekend in France, I took the Eurostar across (under) the channel to visit some old friends, and of course, frequent as many cultural institutions as possible. And where else should I start, but at the British Library.

I visited two exhibitions at the BL – the first, an exhibition on the how, why and what of conservation, and the second, a permanent exhibition of Treasures of the British Library.

The first thing I saw when I entered the permanent treasures exhibition was the BL’s copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio (if you happen to be a fan of our man Will, you could pop in to the State Library of Victoria and see either copy of the second and the fourth folios on display).

Other treasures on display include:

• A copy of the Gutenberg Bible (the first printed book in Western civilisation using moveable type, printed by Johannes Gutenberg in 1455)
  
• The Magna Carta of 1215 (the chief constitutional defence against unjust rule in England, namely a treaty of peace between King John and a group of noblemen)
  
• The original 1863 manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, which later was published as Alice in Wonderland.
  
• The Beowulf manuscript
  
• Letters by Jane Austen
  
• Lewis Carroll’s diary
  
• Pages from Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks
  
• A poem written by Wordsworth in his childhood
  
• Virginia Woolf’s notebook
  
• Capt James Cook’s personal journal – 1775
  
• A letter from Issac Newton to Robert Hooke in 1677, refuting Hooke’s claim to Newton’s plagiarism of his theories.
  

And lots of other cool stuff, like Oriental Manuscripts, Illuminated Manuscripts, and rare sheet music, that really went over my head after I took all of the above list in. Being a heritage glutton, I was pretty much in library geek heaven.


Globe Theatre

Keeping in line with the Shakespeare theme, I couldn’t spend a weekend in London without taking in a play at the Globe Theatre (above). Now renovated back to its former glory after the original building perished in the great fire of 1616, it is a complete replica of the same theatre Shakespeare intended all of his plays to be performed in. Having last been to London during it’s renovations in 1996, I was never able to actually see a play performed here…so I was rather happy to have the opportunity to watch Midsummer’s Night Dream, on a balmy summery evening in London, on it’s opening night.

Imperial War Museum

Whilst our very own Australian War Memorial is by far the best interpretation setting I have seen for war history, this is not far behind it. I was most impressed by the Children at War Exhibition – a full size replica of a house in war time, complete with rationed kitchen, the bath with the black line around it for water saving, and the best program I have seen offered as yet, by any Education Services Unit.

Sitting on a seat, under a clothesline in this exhibition, sat a lovely old lady enjoying her twilight years, recounting to children who approached her, exactly what it was like to be an evacuee in wartime London. Taking a moment myself to chat to this volunteer (one of many employed to recount oral history by the Education Unit), she told me that she remembered the Australian soldiers as a child. She said they were always so in love with their hats.

In the First World War exhibition, I found this, a bible through which a bullet had passed, no doubt not-saving the life of a soldier:

The museum also has a replica WWI trench, which was rather confronting to walk through alone in the dark, and a Blitz experience for WWII.

…and so, back to Paris. Today is my second last day in Paris, and tomorrow my last day at the BnF. It’s been a busy couple of weeks getting ready to leave… and my next blog will be my last…

Now…what to do with my last evening in Paris?