Tea in the Attic, anyone?

The lovely people over at museum studies have a very learned reading group (much more scholarly than the Wellington Reading Group). There next meeting is on Wednesday 20th January at 5.30pm in the usual place (tea room for the uninitiated). The paper is: Stuart, Jan. 2009. 'New at the British Museum: The Sir Percival David Collection in the Sir Joseph Hotung Centre for Ceramic Studies. Arts of Asia. 39 (3), May-June., 57-68. If this sounds like your thing, you'll be very welcome, but need to let Amy know in advance ([email protected]), so you can be allowed into the building, and given a copy of the text. It would be great to see some Labbers there.

China at the centre of the world?

An early c.17^th map of the world, with China at the centre, has gone on display at the Library of Congress. It's printed on rice paper, having been bought recently for $1m. More details on the BBC News website.

Happy Birthday, Royal Society

You can't fail to have missed the birthday celebrations of one of Britain's more venerable learned societies, the Royal Society. Whilst this is a scientific society, the study of the society itself clearly falls within the purview of historians. To celebrate it, there was a rather good four-part In Our Time special last week, to which you may listen here, should you have missed it. And if you wondered about the connexions between Freemasonry and the Royal Society (I have to admit I hadn't), the Library and Museum of Freemasonry has an exhibition on about this until the end of May. I can't imagine there won't be more on this topic over the coming year, so keep watching this space.

The Newarke Houses Museum

The Newarke Houses Museum
January 7th 2010


You step from this Leicester street
to Wharf Street in 1946
where there are no people only taped voices
such as the two women in the corner shop
who complain about the weather,
that you can’t get potatoes
because of the snow and even though
rationing’s over it’s hard to get flour.
This shop’s well-stocked: Camp coffee,
Oxo, home-cured ham. A fat loaf.
Cardinal Polish that ‘won’t wash off in the rain’.
In the pub a man orders his usual mild and bitter.
That’s it, its dregs, on the mantelpiece.
The clock’s stuck at twenty five past five
and on the wall, the Victory edition
of the News Chronicle and adverts for boxing
at Spinney Hill Working Men’s Club.
Soft gloves dangle from a shelf
in the haberdasher’s like bagged game.
Nothing’s dishevelled. There’s the ping
of goods being sent along rails.
In the pawnbroker’s jet necklaces
rest near an amethyst brooch. Golf clubs
sidle next to a brolly. Some woman’s
town shoes have been placed at angles
as if they are are setting off on a journey
and will not be returning. I leave when
the voices begin to repeat themselves.
Post-war, a boom time’s ahead,
but no-body sensed it in Wharf Street,
winter, 1946. Outside it's still freezing.