And Did Those Feet

I am working on the tour of the Somerset House exhibition - 'Wouldn't It Be Nice Exhibition'. Brief given by Abake . Give a guided tour of the On Purpose exhibition at the Arnolfini but the tour is to take place at Somerset House at the 'Wouldn't it be Nice Exhibition.' I'm giving secrets away here but this is the brief I have set myself. 1. to do the tour as if it were a tour of the Bristol Show as straight as possible 2. But not to force the tour into absurdity - i.e. if there is an elephant in Bristol but not one in Somerset House don't keep referring to the Elephant to the confusion of the tour. (there is no elephant by the way) 3. Not to let the audience into the secret if I can help it. 4. To do the tour 'blind' i.e. not to visit the Somerset House exhibition in advance My aim is to keep my Arnolfini exhibition guided tour 'text' intact in my head and to use this to guide my tour in Somerset House. I think a prior viewing o...

I am typing this at the first Butcher's Shop event at the Old Operating Theatre Museum. The idea is Bad Idea's - a magazine for new writing. They are using the Museum amphitheatre to hold at interactive editing session. Writers submit their prose to be editing live in front on a audience. The event is sponsored by Hendrick's Gin - the Gin is Delicious and what is interesting is that it is made using quite a lot of ingredients which were used in the 19 th Century St Thomas Hospital - juniper and meadow sweet for example. I saw a couple of sections of the editing and they made it fun - so it became performative rather than academic. I can't say how good the learning was but the entertainment was high and those leaving were very complimentary - they loved the space and they enjoyed the evening.

Here is a link to the excellent Society of Antiquaries newsletter. Society of Antiquaries of London - Salon

My next walk is this Saturday at Somerset House - it is outside of my normal comfort zone and is part of a Design Exhibition and is a tour of the 'On Purpose' Exhibition which is currently on show at the Arnolfini in Bristol. The Tour, however, takes place in Somerset House, London......... On November 16th I return to a more sane guided tour of the Archaeology of the Origins of London. Free Guided Tour of the 'Wouldn't It Be Nice Exhibition' - but need to pay for entry to the exhibition. 2pm Saturday 1 Nov at Somerset House, Embankment Galleries Archaeology & the Origins of London Sunday, Nov. 16 at 10.45 am from Monument Tube, Fish Street Hill exit: Guided Walk ( For London Walks) looking at the changing understanding of the 'Origins of London' from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the present day.

I am working on a surprising project in association with Abake, the Arnolfini Bristol and Somerset house. Due to take place on Nov 1st. Arnolfini | On Purpose: Design Concepts Somerset House

history doesn't repeat itself but sometimes it rhymes' is a quote from Paul Saffo a forecasting expert. He is misquoting Mark Twain who said: history doesn't repeat itself but it does rhyme. the link below goes to a good summary of Saffo's rules of good futurecasting, and has a further link to Saffo's article. Sox First: Six steps for forecasting

Went to see the Hadrian Exhibition at the British Museum - just before it closes. It was quite enjoyable in a surprisingly low key way - the word Blockbuster is entirely wrong for it. It was almost domestic in its interest. It did not provide much of an introduction to the Roman Empire or the problems of governing it but it did provide a biography of Hadrian starting with a memorial to his wet nurse and with collections of statues of his adoptive parents, wife, successors and his boyfriend Antinous. There was a little bit about the Pantheon, a model of his villa in Tivoli, and a strange series of finds from Caves from jewish refugees, which I assume were included to show the dark side of Roman rule, but they just made it clear how much else had been left out. Very few insights into the Romans except the portraits and the story of Antinous. I took my daughter who is studying Classical Civilisation and somewhat shocked to find she had to pay £12 to get in - surely children studying th...

Sayer Vincent have got some useful guides for Museums - latest one is on Gift Aid. Sayer Vincent - Publications

This is an attempt to bring an archaeological excavation in the City to life - using blogs and web 2.0 to create something of the experience of an excavation. It is an East London Roman Cemetary. Prescot Dig - The Site

Just received the final proofs of my chapter of 'London Stories' - which is to be published by Virgin Books soon. Terrible thing reading the proofs - funny how it does not seem so well written once the post-writing glow has gone! But of course at this stage the last thing they want you to do is to rewrite it all!

Mail reproduces artists visualisation of a Neanderthal created for National Geographic. Meet Wilma: The face of Neanderthal woman revealed for the first time | Mail Online

On Saturday I led a guided walk around Chelsea for june Bretherton's blind group. Its a great walk and it was really enjoyable trying to give the extra visual information. I think it would work as well for the sighted as the blind - it makes you need to give a more imaginative spiel. The walk has a reverse narrative - Kings Road is Chelsea today, while the work ends around Chelsea Old Church which is where Chelsea began. It has sub-themes of the Swinging 60's, City of Palaces, Henry VIII and ThomasMore, the PreRaphaelites, Literary London - Elliot and Bram Stoker and the court case of Oscar Wilde and Whistler. Have a look here for a short version of my walk . Walk back past Alpha Place - where i used to live in an Electricity Board property to find that the whole site has been cleared ready for redevelopment. It was a horrible 1960's building but a bit of my history has gone

This is a proposal for a new form of charity that obviates the need to have a system that needs to be monitored both by the Charity Commission and Companies house. The Charitable Incorporated Organisation

These new pages of the UK on line site have been made available. UKOLN | Cultural Heritage | Home Page

This is the announcement by BAD IDEA Magazine who are holding this event at the Museum. WELCOME TO THE BUTCHER'S SHOP! We're excited to announce a new monthly BAD IDEA event, The Butcher's Shop , beginning Thursday October 30th. Sponsored by Hendrick's Gin, who are providing complimentary cocktails, and held in the atmospheric environs of the Old Operating Theatre (behind London Bridge station) , in The Butcher's Shop BAD IDEA's editors will hack up your beloved prose and put it back together in a unique writing workshop and theatrical experience. Short stories submitted by guests are dissected, chopped up, and improved through an intensive process of live editing and debate. Along with an audience of 50 other writers, discuss and argue with BAD IDEA’s editors as they place your writing on a 19th century operating table – projected onto a big screen – and go to work removing inefficiencies, excising flabby adjectives and probing narrative structure, involv...

At long last the nave of Old St Thomas Church, Southwark is back in use and looking good. It has been restored by the Cathedral Group sympathetically to the architecture. They have kept the Nave as one space and added a new balcony on top of the old balcony. The crypt has been turned into great meeting rooms. It could make a grown man cry - because for years it was our dream to own the Church ourselves, but we never got a chance to make this a reality, so although it is great to see the place restored it is sad that it is not us that did it. However, the new owners have done a good job and have made life as easy for us as it is possible to do while the building work is being completed. So, that is the last time I'm going to refer to the what if and am going to embrace a new age with a good new neighbour. The scaffolding was also coming down and soon, oh bliss, we will soon be without building works disrupting the Museum.

I organised our stall for the London Maze today - a local history fair in the Guildhall. There were about half the people that attended the previous year. I had our tradition stall with basic info on the museum and sales of books, and toys. I experimented with a. the usb frame b. using the projector and laptop But results were that people were not bothered. Few spent at time looking at the slide show or the powerpoint. although a couple of people were impressed by the laptop and projector being as they are so small and light. Sales were a bit sluggish - most of the general history books sold, but just a couple of the medical ones, and no herbal books at all. Toys really did not sell except for a couple of people who wanted squishy skeletons or fly eating tongued toys. I did the 19th Century Surgery demostration 3 times which went well and Connie helped out in the afternoon. London Maze

This Saturday there is a History Fair at the Guildhall this Saturday from 10am onwards (Gresham Street, city of London, Bank Tube). The Old Operating Theatre Museum will be represented and will be doing demonstrations of Victorian Surgery. Kevin Flude will be there representing the Museum so if you visit please come and say hello. It is free and lots of societies and museums will be represented, free guided walks and various reenactments demonstrations and lectures on offer too. More details here http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Corporation/LGNL_Services/Leisure_and_culture/Museums_and_galleries/Guildhall_Art_Gallery/London_Maze/ Also at the Operating Theatre tomorrow night is: DIARY OF A MADMAN by Nicolai Gogol Adapted by Steve Hennessy Directed by Andy Burden, Performed by Seb Steiger In this perfectly atmospheric venue, a new adaptation of Gogol's tragicomic masterpiece that has toured theatres and psychiatric wards to great acclaim. A fascinating and frenetic account of one man...

This term I have been contacted by several schools to do a Victorian London walk as part of the A Level Curriculum. The Schools have found me from the web site. I've been doing a Dickens/Victorian London walk which starts at Borough High Street. It has been working well so far.

On the Aegean Cruise I had to edit the slides I had scanned and put them into power point. I took my EEE PC because it is light, and although it worked the small size of the screen and the software made it a little difficult. So I cannot entirely recommend it for heavy weight editing work but it works well enough for minor tinkering. I followed instructions to load Gimp which completely failed, so I gave up on that. I intended to use the Photoshop editor on the Web but a. it did not work on the EEE PC and b. the internet connections on MV Discovery were appalling. But I did find a way of working effectively. I used photomanager to look though lots of slides and used filemanager. I changed the view to thumbnail and configured filemanager to open up mtpaint on double clicking. mtpaint enables cropping (using the selection tool) and some touching up - did everything I wanted gimp for. The only remaining problem was getting rid of the unsuccessful Gimp installation

It has been confirmed that I am to continue as a Honorary Lecturer at UCL as I have been asked to give the 'Digitisation and Museums' module for the second time. It went very well last time - mainly because I got a lot of great lecturers in to help out! But if feels good to be lecturing there.

I've just come back from a Cruise on the MV Discovery which went from Venice to Istanbul, via Koper, Zadar, Dubrovnik, Hvar, Cephalonia, Delos, Ephesus and Istanbul. I was the lecturer for the Elderhostel group. It was very hard work but I enjoyed it. What I learnt from the Cruise was that it is a good way of seeing a lot of different places. No need to keep packing and unpacking and finding hotels in different towns. So a sense of easy touring. One issue is the number of Cruises taking the same or similar route - you arrive in Dubrovnik with 3 5000 sea ter cruisers and a couple of 1000 seaters. That means some 15,000 tourists descending on a small town all at the same time. I gave a series of lectures entitled: Celts and Romans Everyday Life in the Roman Empire Romans as Rulers The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Images from Santorini - Cruise Liner in the Caldera and a fresco from the Museum at Thera

Here are some lectures coming up in the next month which you may be interested in: * What is British Art? (Tate Britain) A Third Text project in collaboration with Tate Britain on Friday, 10 October at 10:00:00 More details: http://www.lecturelist.org/content/view_lecture/5957?mail=y * Black Georgians (Hunterian Museum, London) To mark Black History Month, the museum is hosting a study day examining the lives of Black children and servants in eighteenth and early ninteenth century Britain on Wednesday, 22 October at 10:00:00 More details: http://www.lecturelist.org/content/view_lecture/5932?mail=y * A History of Changing Women's Fashions (Grosvenor Museum) A look at womens fashions through the ages on Friday, 24 October at 14:00:00 More details: http://www.lecturelist.org/content/view_lecture/5918?mail=y * Britain since 1918: the strange career of British democracy (Sheikh Zayed Theatre, London School of Economics) LSE public lecture on Wednesday, 29 Oc...

Just to let you know that we are publishing, as an e-Book, an updated version of Paul Herbert and my book 'the Citisight's Guide to London' It was conceived as an interactive book and now we think the technology is right for us to republish it as an interactive ebook, which will finally allow the interactivety we planned to be used to its full. We now have to update the book before republishing it. I am pleased to see that Tony Clayton is continuing his publication programme and give you details of his latest event. I also include information on a William Blake Walk. Kevin Flude South East London Folklore Society presents LEGENDARY LONDONERS A talk by Antony Clayton Thursday 9th October 2008, 8pm The Old King's Head Kings Head Yard, 45-49, Borough High St, London, SE1 1NA. (Nearest stations are London Bridge and Borough) The author of The Folklore of London and popular SELFS speaker discusses the problems of separating fact from folklore in the lives and exploit ...

I see I am quoted in SE1 website re my comment on the proposed closure of the London fire Brigade Museum. But more importantly, sign up for the petition to save this fine and important London Museum. Petition launched to save London Fire Brigade Museum [2 October 2008]