As I posted a couple of months ago, the British Library’s exhibition Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War is now open, and will be until February. The Library has the world’s largest collection of manuscripts from pre-Conquest England, but these are paired with high-prestige manuscripts loaned by other institutions, and with other objects such as jewellery,…
Category: Exhibitions, museums, events
Now open: Anglo-Saxon Exhibition at the British Library
Hwæt! The British Library’s new exhibition, Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, has now opened. I have had the great privilege of working alongside the curators, being one of the first to see the completed exhibition, and of celebrating the official opening. A number of the manuscripts which I have written about in my blogposts are…
Egyptian Days and Ayurvedic Man: medical cultural connections
One of the advantages of working in central London is the sheer number of interesting exhibitions and other events going on all around me. The other day I wandered into the Wellcome Collection to see if they had anything interesting to see, and was rewarded with a free exhibition called Ayurvedic Man: Encounters with Indian…
Clasps, crosses and conservators: a visit to the Staffordshire Hoard
Over the summer, I wrote a review of the Viking exhibition at the Yorkshire Museum in York. In this, I mentioned that it was useful to see an Anglo-Saxon sword equipped with the kinds of golden and jewelled fittings that we can see in the hoard that was discovered in Staffordshire a few years ago, most of…
Sandal socks and auburn hair: a walk through the museum of memory
A few months ago, I wrote a post about the Viking exhibition at the Yorkshire Museum here in York, in collaboration with the British Museum. It closed yesterday, but will shortly be moving on to the University of Nottingham Museum, The Atkinson, Southport, Aberdeen Art Gallery and Norwich Castle Museum over the course of the…
Viking: Rediscover the Legend, Yorkshire Museum – a review
I live within a short walk of a museum mostly dedicated to local history and archaeology. Of course, this is in York, which has played a significant part in several crucial events in English and British history. The Romans had a military base here; it was an important site for the Anglo-Saxon church; it was…
Strange beings: translating some Exeter Riddles
I saw four strange beings travel together: black were their tracks, very dark traces. Fast on its journey, bolder than birds, it flew in the air, dived beneath the waves. The labouring fighter suffered restlessly, he who shows all four of them the paths over ornamented gold. The four strange beings, if you were wondering,…
Anglian-era York at the York Festival of Ideas
The 2017 York Festival of Ideas will be running from 6-18 June, with the title The Story of Things. With a number of the events relating to York’s Anglian era, I was asked to translate a small number of Anglo-Saxon riddles to decorate the promotional bookmarks for this strand of the festival. The three riddles,…
For the Wynn 