Hidden heritage
The British Museum recently played host to the launch of the Portable Antiquities Annual Report, and I was pleased to be there to do the ministerial thing and mark its publication with a few warm words. I’d better explain at this point what Portable Antiquities are. They’re items that have been found – usually by metal detectorists, but sharp-eyed gardeners play a part too – on or under the ground, and which are more than 300 years old but not made of a precious metal. So it’s coins, belt buckles, weapons and trinkets. One item I was allowed to actually pick up (wearing conservators’ gloves, of course) was an exquisite, decorated copper-alloy comb which was around 2,000 years old – extraordinary to think that such craft and workmanship was taking place when the tools to create it must have been so rudimentary. Rather humbling to hold that comb and make the connection to an era understood to us today in only the broadest terms.
Last year around 60,000 items were reported and it’s estimated that more than 6,000 people regularly go out hunting for more. I think this is a brilliantly British pastime: inexplicable to the outside observer, but engrossing to the person doing it. I was very pleased to pay tribute to them all.
Underground finds of a more exotic nature were on show some days later at the opening of ‘The Vault’ at The Natural History Museum. If I had to sum it up in one word, I think that word would be awesome (in the literal, rather than Hollywood, sense). A lump of rock from Mars which looks like nothing so much as a broken cobble stone; the Devonshire emerald, a mere 1,400 carats of cracked Colombian gemstone; and the Aurora Collection of 296 naturally coloured diamonds arranged in a neat grid, looking (if you half close your eyes) like a Damien Hirst spot painting were just a few of the items on show that made me catch my breath.
I also found myself at the Imperial War Museum this week. It must be more than 15 years since I was last there. At that stage it was part of the weekend child visit rota that London parents relentlessly followed: the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, the dinosaurs in Kensington, the pelicans in St James’s (with a fairy tale view of Buckingham Palace thrown in)….. But returning to Kennington without a kite’s tail of small children behind me, I was delighted to find a complete change of atmosphere. What I remember in the past as being a bit of a glorification of war has now become a really interesting interpretation of social history. It was full to the brim with school children, and the educational value they were getting from it all was etched on their curious faces. The Children’s War and ‘50s house took me back as well: with memories of my own childhood which I thought were long buried.
I hadn’t really thought of my cultural week as having a heritage theme, but I suppose it did. Unveiling a blue plaque on the house in Soho Square where Mary Seacole, the mixed race British ‘doctress’ who worked heroically in the Crimean War lived, I was struck by what a really brilliant institution blue plaques are. An unobtrusive part of the street landscape that makes us stop, read, reflect and – for a moment – connect with whoever lived there. And this blue plaque also reminds us of the multi cultural past which was, even then, a distinctive feature of London. English Heritage, who run the scheme, can be proud of their work.
Richard Brooks, the beady-eyed but always charming arts correspondent on The Sunday Times, criticised me in his Biteback column last weekend for only ever saying nice things in this diary about the arts and culture that I encounter. I sort of see what he means, but it’s nonetheless true that the great majority of what I go to is really good. I prefer to draw a veil over the (very) few turkeys that come my way. But that said, a trip to The Golden Compass did leave me cold. The special effects were brilliant, as they always are, but as I sat letting it all wash over me, I wondered who it would really appeal to. It’s rated PG, but this P would not G anyone of less than secondary school age to go and see it – too dark, scary and unsettling, in my personal opinion. So there we are, Richard. Although I suspect ‘not really my cup of tea’ probably won’t pass the Brooks test of critical credibility. But don’t forget, I’m not a critic – my job is to champion arts and culture in its many forms. That doesn’t mean I have to like it all, but I do sometimes have to be a little more circumspect than others in the audience.
Finally though, I did enjoy the magic of Warhorse at the National and the brilliantly evocative designs of Ancient Egypt by Zandra Rhodes in the Coliseum’s new production of Aida. Both highly recommended.