The Writers' Museum

Up in Edinburgh recently, I had a walk around the Old Town and, after enjoying the view from Castle Rock and checking out St Giles’ Cathedral, I chanced upon the Writers’ Museum, located in a courtyard just off the Royal Mile.

Well, seeing as I occasionally volunteer at Dr Johnson’s House down in London (and had just chanced upon a pub close to the castle which has a plaque outside saying that Samuel Johnson had dined there with James Boswell in 1770), I had to go in and have a look around. The building itself is called Lady Stair’s House and dates back to 1622 (as can be deduced from that year being carved onto the lintel over the front door) although it’s named after a woman – the widow of the Earl of Stair – who bought it in 1719. Having restored it in the late nineteenth century, Lord Rosebery (briefly Prime Minister in the 1890s; Winston Churchill later quipped that he “outlived his future by ten years and his past by more than twenty”) donated it to the city of Edinburgh for use as a museum in 1907.

 

The museum is a delightful building whose three floors (accessed by two staircases, one a spiral and the other, main one having uneven stairs – an old anti-burglar trick) are devoted to three of Scotland’s most famous writers (two of whom were born in Edinburgh): Robert Burns (1759-96), Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) and Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894).

Burns, now regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement, collected old folk songs from across Scotland (something that was being done by various writers across Europe at the time) as well as writing his own material, which includes ‘Auld Lang Syne’, ‘Address to a Haggis’ (as recited after the haggis is piped in at a Burns Night dinner) and that poem in which he says that the “best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men” do something in the Scots dialect that I can’t pronounce although I do know that it translates as ‘often go wrong’. The artefacts of his in the museum include a cast of his skull (made when his widow, who outlived him by 38 years, was laid to rest alongside him) and a sword-stick – a slim sword concealed in a walking-stick, which he had because he worked as an exciseman as well as being a writer.

I’d already seen the Scott Monument on Princes Street, a large Gothic tower that I was not surprised to learn is the largest monument to a writer anywhere in the world (it is not far from Waverley Station, Edinburgh’s mainline railway station which I suspect is the only train station in the world that’s named after a novel). The museum has Scott-related items of a more personal nature, such as his childhood rocking-horse (with one foot-hold higher than the other, for he suffered from polio as a child) and a lock of his hair. I’ve often thought that Scott – who met Burns when he was 15 – is one of those writers I should read more of – I’ve only read two of his books; Ivanhoe many years ago, after watching a TV adaptation of it, while a couple of years back I made heavy work of Waverley. Scott, I was intrigued to learn, was made a baronet not for his writing but for finding the Scottish crown jewels (which hadn’t been used since the seventeenth century and were thought to have been lost), and he was also the man who co-ordinated George IV’s visit to Edinbugh in 1822, a spectacular affair that did much to establish tartan as a potent symbol of Scottish identity (it had previously been banned in the wake of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745) and only took three weeks to plan.

The part dedicated to Stevenson is in the basement. This contains a wooden cupboard, once owned by Stevenson’s father, that was made by no less a person than William Brodie, better known as Deacon Brodie, a notorious eighteenth-century public figure in Edinburgh; a respectable cabinet-maker, locksmith and city councillor by day (he had the title ‘deacon’ not out of anything to do with religion but because he was head of a trade guild), he was also a thief and a burglar (many of his victims being people who he had made locks for!) by night. The pub named after him on the Royal Mile, not far from where he was hanged in 1788, plays on this dichotomy by showing both sides of his personality on either side of the sign. Amost a century later,  Deacon Brodie would serve as the main inspiration for Stevenson’s novella Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. There’s also some interesting information about Treasure Island (he came up with the map first, and worked the story around that). Although his literary reputation did for a time suffer at the hand of those snobs of the Bloomsbury Set, Stevenson’s legacy has been enormous – just think of how many stories derive from those two that I’ve mentioned! As for me, I’ve always meant to read some of his travel writing but, as with more Scott, it’s just something I don’t seem to have got around to.

There were some pictures of other Scottish writers on the walls; I was pleased to find a photograph of John Buchan, although the most impressive picture was the tapestry depiction of Burns, Scott and Stevenson.

Finally, there’s currently an exhibition at the Writers’ Museum devoted to a modern Scottish writer – Ian Rankin, for 2017 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Rebus books, the Edinburgh detective having made his first appearance in 1987’s Knots and Crosses. Rankin wrote that novel after having the idea of updating Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde into then-modern Edinburgh, which is why the reader is for a time led to suspect that the troubled detective is also the villain of the piece (and he could easily have been, for at the time Rankin had no plans to bring him back for more). I like the Rebus novels, to the extent that I made a point of seeking out the Oxford Bar when I was in Edinburgh last year, so I loved that there was an exhibition devoted to them at the museum.

All in all, well worth a visit.

The London Stone

Opposite the entrance to Cannon Street Station in the City – itself built on the site of a medieval church that was destroyed in the Great Fire – there stood until earlier this year one of London’s oldest landmarks, a largely forgotten chunk of masonry (limestone, to be exact) that is said to be of great significance although its surroundings were somewhat modest. Set into the wall behind an iron grille in front of a branch of W.H. Smith’s on busy Cannon Street was the London Stone.

Some say that it is of Roman origin, and that it may have been an object of religious veneration in pre-Christian times. Could it have something to do King Arthur? Or was it a milestone? There’s even a legend in a similar vein to that concerning the ravens at the Tower, although this one ties in with either of the City’s mythical founders (take your pick between Brutus of Troy and King Lud) to the effect that London will fall if it (the stone) is destroyed. The fifteenth-century rebel leader Jack Cade is said to have struck it with his sword, an apparently ancient way of declaring himself to be in charge, although there’s not much evidence for this other than the relevant scene in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2.

All we know for sure is that there are references to the London Stone dating back to the late eleventh century, and it was sufficiently well-known in medieval times for its name to have been given to the surrounding area (the first Lord Mayor was called Henry Fitz-Ailwin de Londonestone). After the Great Fire of 1666, Sir Christopher Wren (who reckoned that it was of Roman origin) built it into the south wall of one of his churches, St Swithin London Stone. This was badly damaged in the Blitz and the remains were demolished in 1962, following which the London Stone was put into its current setting in front of a shop which was built on the site of the church. Occasional development of this site resulted in rumours that the Stone would be removed; perhaps wary of the old legend, the developers left it in its place.

Last year, I went to have a look while going for a stroll in the City, and was assured to note that I wasn’t the only one who was taking a close look as a couple of tourists were interested too; conversely, people from all over the world have come to see it (and have been invariably taken aback by its less-than-auspicious setting), while others just walked past it every day without giving it a glance (for them, it was probably just something on the way to work; historically significant things in London can be like that for Londoners, sometimes). Sadly there was a fair amount of rubbish in the grille but at least the Stone was visible, and the back of it could be seen from the inside of the newsagent’s. A very modest setting for an ancient monument that had survived plagues, rebellions, fires, bombing raids and even the attentions of post-war property developers and (according to a BBC report from 2006) twenty-first century cowboy builders.

That changed earlier this year, when the prospect of  yet further development led to the London Stone's removal from its site. It can now be seen in the Museum of London, presumably getting more attention in a glass case rather than behind a litter-strewn grille, although when the building work is complete on Cannon Street it will return there, to be displayed on a plinth; once again, no doubt, it will attract the attention of some while being ignored by others.

The Pepys show

To Greenwich, where the National Maritime Museum is housing an exhibition devoted to the life and times of a seventeenth-century naval civil servant and man-about-town who just happened to record everything that he saw and experienced in a diary. ‘Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire and Revolution’ tells the story of a most turbulent time in English history (from the aftermath of the Civil War to the Glorious Revolution) through the eyes of the greatest of diarists.

Here was a man who, although he must have realised that someone in the future would read what he’d written down, left nothing out – even when it reflected badly on him (and, as he wasn’t the most faithful of husbands, there’s plenty of that). As well as the minutiae of his personal life (what he ate, who he met, problems with the servants, trips to the theatre, falling asleep in church), his diary – which he kept between 1660 and 1669, writing it in shorthand by candle-light and only giving up when he feared for his eyesight – has eye-witness accounts of some of the key events of the age – the return and coronation of Charles II (Pepys left the ceremony early, as he needed the loo), the Great Plague of 1665, the Great Fire of 1666. It is both a fantastic and fascinating read, a real window through which we can glimpse the past. The whole thing amounts to over a million words, and remains one of the key texts for understanding Restoration England; for this reason, the exhibition’s publicity calls him, with some justification, “history’s greatest witness”.

Pepys came from a humble background – the son of a London tailor, he was the fifth of eleven children but the oldest one to survive. Earmarked as a bright boy, he attended St Paul’s School and then went to Cambridge, following which he came under the patronage of his well-connected cousin, Edward Montagu (who’s appeared on this blog before; he was a Parliamentarian soldier who became one of Cromwell’s generals-at-sea before being instrumental in inviting Charles II back to England, upon which he was ennobled as the Earl of Sandwich) who ensured his entry into the civil service. He married young (but not as young as his wife Elisabeth, who was just 14) and in 1658 he underwent surgery – a high-risk option at the time – to remove a bladder stone. Seventeenth-century surgical equipment can be seen in the exhibition.

The tumultuous times in which he lived are brought to bear early on in the exhibition with a large painting of Charles I’s execution, which Pepys bunked off school to see (although curiously, the painting shows Thomas Fairfax as the executioner, even though he hadn’t even signed the death warrant). There are plenty of items Cromwell-related (Pepys was a great admirer of the Lord Protector), including his death mask and a large bowl commemorating Charles II’s evading of Cromwell’s troops by hiding in an oak tree after the battle of Worcester – an event that, in addition to giving us the Royal Oak pub name, Charles later retold to one S. Pepys, who recorded it for posterity.

Portraits abound – as well as Pepys himself, there’s Cromwell, Charles II in coronation regalia, two of his patron Montagu (“my Lord”), his wife Elisabeth (reproduced from an engraving, the original having been destroyed long ago) and various contemporaries like Sir Christoper Wren. There are also portraits of some of the Merry Monarch’s mistresses, including an almost-naked Nell Gwyn, the most famous actress of the age (“pretty, witty Nell”, Pepys called her), and Mary Davis, another actress who (we learnt) Pepys rather liked, although Elisabeth took a different view, describing her as “the most impertinent slut in the world”. There’s even space for a miniature of Frances Stuart, who refused to become a royal mistress and who is said to have been the model for Britannia, as depicted on the old (pre-decimal) penny and the (pre-2008) 50p coin.

As well as exhibits – models of ships, musical instruments (Pepys loved to relax with some music), items used in futile attempts to ward off plague, many documents and letters (do check out Charles II’s love-letter to Louise de Kerouaille, and wonder how it could have been written by a man who was far from monogamous) – there are graphics, and it’s here that the exhibition does very well. The section on Restoration theatre (quite literally restored, as Cromwell had banned it) is complete with recordings of extracts from plays – a period comedy, and Macbeth done in the style of the time – interspersed with readings of extracts from Pepys’s diary where he comments on plays he’s seen, complementing visuals of silhouetted actors and actresses giving it their best despite loud cat-calls from a lively audience. Better still is the depiction of the Great Fire of 1666 – a large-scale picture of old London across which the flames gradually spread, to the sound of a roaring fire and Pepy’s commentary (indeed, many consider his eye-witness account of the Great Fire, right down to his burying a Parmesan cheese in his garden, to be the best part of the diary).

Pepys’s professional career is dealt with in a section on naval warfare (the diary aside, he is still regarded by naval historians as one of the most crucial civilians ever to have played a part in the development of the Royal Navy), while beyond that there’s a part devoted to science that explores Pepys’s role in the Royal Society – through which he knew the likes of Newton, Hooke, Halley and Wren. There are scientific instruments on display here, and most interestingly there’s a first edition of Newton’s Principia that refers to Pepys by name on the title page, as he had authorised its publication in his capacity as President of the Royal Society.

The exhibition ends with some detail on the Glorious Revolution – an event which brought about Pepys’s professional downfall. He rose high – as well as an MP, he was Secretary for the Admiralty – but his career was tied with the fortunes of James II (who, as Duke of York, had been the Lord High Admiral and had as such been well aware of Pepys’s work with the Navy). By supporting James’s right to succeed to the throne despite his Catholicism, Pepys was in fact one of the original Tories (the Tory-Whig distinction dates from the Exclusion Crisis) and he was for a time imprisoned in the Tower on fabricated charges (he was accused, among other things, of secretly being a Catholic – a dangerous thing to be accused of at the height of the hysteria known as the Popish Plot). When James fled the country, Pepys retired from public life.

Just about the only thing that’s not on show is the diary itself – that is kept at Pepys’s old college at Cambridge where it’s not allowed to leave the premises as per the terms of Pepys’s will, which is on display. Written in shorthand and bound in six volumes, the original version of the diary was part of Pepys’s very large book collection (itself one of the most impressive seventeenth-century private libraries in existence) and it wasn’t transcribed into plain English until the early nineteenth century – a job that took three years, with the transcriber only realising towards the end of his mammoth task (and you can see some of this work) that the key to Pepys’s shorthand system was written down in another book located a few shelves above the diary volumes!

There were a few things that I learned, and not just the fact about the actual diary not being allowed to leave Cambridge. I was rather surprised to learn that it wasn’t published in its entirety until the 1970s; earlier editions of the diary left the really racy bits out, and it was only after the Lady Chatterley trial that these were deemed fit for publication. The full-length version runs to eleven volumes (including the companion and index); most of us settle for single-volume abridgements like The Shorter Pepys (itself over 1000 pages) although there is a very useful online version of an older edition.

There are just a few weeks left before the exhibition closes. Go now, while you still have the chance.

A morning in the British Museum

London is home to a lot of fantastic museums, and I will freely admit that I haven’t visited them all (somewhat inexplicably, I still haven’t been to Sir John Soane’s Museum, which I must do at some point). My favourite is the British Museum, home of artefacts from all aspects of human history, mainly because I am a history addict but also because I always manage to find something new to look at whenever I go. It is, like all of the ‘national’ museums in Britain, free to get in – which also adds to the appeal.

After entering via the impressive porticoed entrance on Great Russell Street (although I usually prefer the northern entrance on Montague Place, opposite Senate House; less crowds) I wandered, as I usually do, over to the Egyptian collection to look at both the Rosetta Stone and the crowds of people looking at it, then taking in the bust of Ramesses II that apparently inspired Shelley to write ‘Ozymandias’ (“I met a traveller from an antique land…”). Having taken in the nearby Elgin Marbles and pieces from not one but two of the Seven Wonders of the World (the British Museum has bits from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Temple of Artemis), I followed the crowds upstairs to Rooms 62 and 63 – the ones with the Ancient Egyptian mummies (I read somewhere that the British Museum’s collection of Egyptian things is second only to that of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo).

From there I passed through various rooms to get to the Weston Gallery (Roman Britain, including the 4^th century AD 28-piece silver dinner service that is the Mildenhall Treasure), and thence to admire the finds from the Sutton Hoo burial site and – one of my favourite exhibits – the Lewis Chessmen. By this point I’d lost track of the time completely – a good thing, as the best museums are always the ones in which you’re so taken by what’s on display that you’re not fully aware of the passage of time.

So much to see, and I’d only covered a fraction of the museum. But what was the ‘something new’ that I saw on my latest visit? Tucked into a corner in one of the larger rooms was a crystal skull – a life-size carving of a human skull made from a single block of clear quartz crystal. I knew that the British Museum had one of those (there was something in the news about it when Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out back in 2008), but I had never come across it before and, given its provenance I hadn’t though that it would be on display. Back in the late nineteenth century, the British Museum had acquired it on the assumption that had been made by the Aztecs – although scientific tests (including a joint project with the Smithsonian Institution in the USA, which has a similar item in its collection) later showed that it is in fact a fake – made in the nineteenth century at a time when public interest in ancient cultures was high, and passed off as an ancient artefact to cash in on such interest. The accompanying sign says that it’s “probably European, 19^th century AD” and “not an authentic pre-Columbian artefact”.

I wonder what I’ll find there next time?

Bond in Motion

A recent museum visit has been to the London Film Museum for Bond in Motion, an exhibit which was meant to have closed months ago but which is still going due to popular demand. This is a collection of vehicles from the Bond movies - cars, boats, aircraft and assorted props. If you're a fan of the series, or if you're vaguely interested in that sort of thing, it's worth going.

On entering, we're confronted with a scale-model helicopter that was used in the explosion-laden attack on 007's childhood home in Skyfall. Upstairs are some storyboard sketches from the films, but downstairs is where the hardware is to be seen.

First off, we're confronted with two Rollers; Goldfinger's one from, err, Goldfinger and the one from A View to a Kill - you remember, the one that Christopher Walken and Grace Jones pushed into a lake, and Roger Moore managed to survive by using one of the tyres as a makeshift aqualung. You don't remember? That's fine, because this exhibition has flat-screens on the walls next to each exhibit showing the scenes from the film each vehicle appeared in.

Next up is a plane - the mini-jet from Octopussy that ran out of petrol; nearby is the reversible jacket used in the same pre-credits sequence. 

What's that red car over there? It's Tracy's Mercury Cougar from On Her Majesty's Secret Service, complete with skis on the back, and the chase sequence on the accompanying flat-screen shows that it was Diana Rigg's character who got to do the driving, with George Lazenby relegated to the passenger seat.

Just along from here are the BMWs from the Pierce Brosnan era, including the remote-controlled repmobile from Tomorrow Never Dies (fun fact: the chase sequence was filmed in the car park at Brent Cross shopping centre), parked opposite the villain's Jag and the 'disappearing' Aston from Die Another Day. Further along is another Aston, the V8 Volante from the Timothy Dalton era, with the cello-case they used to escape propped up nearby.

Moving on, there's another aircraft, the 'Little Nelly' gyrocopter from You Only Live Twice (a big screen behind it shows us the airborne action sequence) alongside assorted motorbikes, the tuk-tuk from Octopussy and the Renault that got taken apart in the Paris chase in A View to a Kill.

What about the boats? They're here somewhere ... the speedboats from Live and Let Die and The World Is Not Enough are present and correct, and there are underwater bits and bobs from Thunderball, For Your Eyes Only and Never Say Never Again (yes, the unofficial one's here too). As far as sub-aquatic Bond is concerned, though, the one everyone really wants to see is the Lotus that turns into a submarine in The Spy Who Loved Me.

But that is of course merely the second most famous of Bond's vehicles. What of the silver-grey Aston Martin DB5 driven by Sean Connery in Goldfinger that became part of 007 folklore to such an extent that two of his successors have driven it too? It's here, more or less in the middle; no exhibition of Bond vehicles is complete without a DB5.

There are two modern Astons as well, both of which show evidence of having been well-used to say the least. The DBS from Casino Royale, the one that got rolled multiple times, is next to the DBS from Quantum of Solace that is missing a door on the driver's side and although it's roped off there's a sign on the seat saying that no-one is allowed to sit on it (yes, I was tempted). Both of these, by the way, have the steering wheel on the left-hand side - all previous vehicles (the ones supplied by Q-Branch, at any rate) have had the wheel on the right, British style. Daniel Craig's blood-stained dinner jacket is displayed nearby.

Fancy a coffee? Displayed in the cafeteria (and yes, they are playing Bond themes on a loop) are the helicopter and armoured train models from GoldenEye and a glass cabinet displaying an array of tie-in toys.

Then there's a collection of props in a glass cabinet near one of the Astons; contents include a Walther PPK with a silencer, a sliver money clip and several passports issued to various incarnations of 'Bond, James'; did the makers really go to this amount of detail? There's even an old-fashioned paper driving licence which shows that Bond has four penalty points!

Well, given how many of the afore-mentioned vehicles ended up getting damaged in some way, you wouldn't expect the world's greatest fictional spy to have a clean licence, would you?

'Sausage? Sausage?'

Did you know that there's a museum in London devoted to Samuel Johnson? Dr Johnson's House on Gough Square was where the great lexicographer lived from 1748 to 1759, before he met James Boswell but during the time when he wrote his famous Dictionary of the English Language which was published in 1755. It's a fantastic 300 year-old townhouse located in the maze of alleyways and courtyards north of Fleet Street.

A statue of his cat, Hodge, stands nearby. He was fed on oysters, which in the 18th century weren't the delicacy they are today, and Johnson insisted on buying them himself so that his servant would not come to resent the cat. 

Few people have actually read anything by Johnson nowadays; ironically, the one book concerning one of this country's greatest men of letters that is still widely read is Boswell's biography of him (an assiduous diarist, Boswell took it upon himself to record as many of his friend's witticisms as he could, which came in very handy when he set himself the task of writing his biography). But the number of people who've read Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson is itself in all probability dwarfed by the number of people who know that Samuel Johnson was the man who wrote the first dictionary (not actually the first, but definitely the best-researched and most influential prior to the publication of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1884) because they saw that episode of Blackadder.

I refer, of course, to the episode in the third series (the Georgian-era one) in which they try to get the Prince Regent to be the patron of the Dictionary. Dr Johnson (played by Robbie Coltraine) is not impressed, and Blackadder, having made up several words in order to wind Johnson up, ends up attempting to re-write the Dictionary after Baldrick inadvertently burns the only copy.

(Before we go any further, I should point out that I am well aware of the extent to which the writers of Blackadder took certain historical liberties; after all, it was a comedy, not a documentary. Johnson's Dictionary was published many decades before the Regency (which Johnson himself did not live to see) while Lord Byron is shown as a contemporary of Johnson's when in reality the former hadn't even been born when the latter died. In other episodes Blackadder, Baldrick and the Prince Regent encounter Pitt the Younger, who also died before the Regency, and are involved in a send-up of The Scarlet Pimpernel which, while the future George IV is a supporting character in said novel, is set some time before he became Regent. But I digress).

One of the attractions at Dr Johnson's House is the Dictionary Room, which houses shelves full of Johnson-related books including several Dictionaries (it is believed that when Johnson lived here, this room was his bedroom; the Dictionary was written upstairs in the Garret). A 1755 original lies opened under glass, while on the table are facsimiles of the two-volume original in which visitors can look up any word of their choosing.

One of the gags in the Blackadder episode is the discovery that Dr Johnson left the word 'sausage' out of his Dictionary. Fans of Blackadder will no doubt be disappointed to learn that in real life, 'sausage' is in fact in there (although 'aardvark' is not). That said, 'sausage' is not where you would expect to find it.

For Johnson had the letters 'u' and 'v' the wrong way round. The order in which these letters come in the alphabet was apparently not standardised until the 19th century. What this means for the word-hunting Blackadder fan is that 'sausage' comes after all of the words beginning with 'sav-', not before. 

After the Dictionary, Johnson set himself the task of editing the works of Shakespeare; his eight-volume critical edition of Shakespeare's plays was published 250 years ago (it proved so popular that the preface was also published separately) and established Johnson as a leading literary critic. Dr Johnson's House is currently housing an exhibition commemorating this, 'Shakespeare in the 18th century: Johnson, Garrick & friends', which will be there until 28th November.

The big charter

In many ways, it is a document that made history. In June 1215 in a muddy field by the Thames just outside Windsor, King John affixed his seal to an agreement known by its Latin name, Magna Carta (literally, 'big charter').

At the time, it was essentially a peace treaty; John was widely discredited by 1215, having lost Normandy eleven years earlier and subsequently levied excessive taxes to fund his unsuccessful attempts to get it back. His barons were in open revolt, and faced with the prospect of a French invasion John had little option but to agree to their demands. The charter that he sealed (not signed) regulated the administration of justice and established the principle of due legal process. 

John, of course, was not one of England's more reliable kings and he went back on his word as soon as he could. What saved Magna Carta was his death a year later; after that, a revised version was issued to win support for the new King, Henry III, who was just nine years old. Subsequent reissues in 1217 and 1225 ensured that Magna Carta was imprinted on the consciousness of the nation; among its key points were the right to a fair trial - which is still on the statute books to this day: 

"No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land."

This was one of the first steps taken in England towards the establishment of parliamentary democracy. Over time, it was used by those wishing to restrain royal power (those who drew up the Petition of Right and the Grand Remonstrance in the run-up to the Civil War were inspired by it, and it was cited at Charles I's trial), and it greatly influenced the American colonists' Declaration of Independence in 1776. In the twentieth century it inspired the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Its influence has been truly widespread, to the extent that it is said to compete with the English language as this country's greatest export.

To celebrate the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, there is an exhibition at the British Library which includes the four original surviving copies and looks it its long legacy. It's definitely worth going to see, although it closes at the end of the month. Go now, while you still have the chance.