With the prospect of all COVID-related restrictions lifting in late June, my husband and I decided there was never going to be a better time for a sightseeing weekend in London. Major tourist attractions were open, but visitor numbers were strictly limited and foreign tourists still absent. Like most people who live here, we hadn’t bothered with many of London's "star sights" for ages. I will put up with shrieking mobs of children on school trips, or aggressive power sightseers elbowing me out of their way for the perfect photo, when someplace new. But on my own turf? Not worth the hassle. Social distancing, however, meant no hassle ... so it was time to take advantage of one of the few benefits of pandemic.
We had a packed weekend. The British Museum after work on Friday, Westminster Abbey on Saturday, and the Tower of London on Sunday. Add dinner at the renown Cinnamon Club on Saturday and a relaxing stay in a junior suite at our club for a proper mini break.It’s no surprise we started things at my favourite repository of culture, of course. Granted, the British Museum does not fit onto that list of the long-avoided. Between my membership, a fabulous members' lounge, and my continuing love of the ancient world, it is instead one of my boltholes for seeking respite from London's madness. But it's even better when near empty. Until regulations lift, all attendance must be booked in advance for either the main galleries or special exhibitions, and there is a one-way system throughout. Even with cavernous spaces and lofty ceilings, social distancing regulations demand sparse numbers. So sparse, it reminds me of the days when my mother worked in museums and we could wander through galleries before they opened to the public. Bliss.
Our objective: a double dip into current exhibitions. The infamous Roman Emperor Nero is in residence in the main exhibition space on the ground floor, while saintly Thomas Becket holds court in the smaller gallery above the rotunda. Both shows are excellent, but I give the slight edge to Becket for the completeness of its concept and storytelling.
But first to Ancient Rome. Nero is legendary as a monster who persecuted Christians, murdered his mother, kicked his pregnant wife to death and fiddled while Rome burned. Nero: the Man Behind the Myth's main objective is to remind us that history is written by the winners. And in the late 1st century AD, those were people with no love for Nero or the dynasty he ended. Thus it's credible to imagine the last Julio-Claudian Emperor was not as bad as his press.
Nice premise, but there wasn't enough evidence here to completely exonerate one of history's great villains. Though they did bring balance and if you don't know a lot about him to start out with, this may be an eye-opener.
The displays throughout felt more like an illustration of Roman life at the time than any specific defence of the young emperor. Nero was the titular head of the army, so here is a gallery with lots of military memorabilia. Nero liked and staged lots of gladiatorial contests, so here’s an excuse to show some gladiators' armour. He fancied himself a great musician, so we get a wall fresco of Romans playing music. It all looks great, but it wasn't shifting the weight of history for me.
I felt that Nero's position in the arts was particularly underplayed. The section dedicated to the architecture he left behind in Rome … the Renaissance-era discovery of which sparked design trends that lasted for centuries… was beautifully designed to sit in an octagon beneath a gauzy dome. This mimics Nero's famous octagonal room with its rotating ceiling reflecting the heavens. But the materials on display below it were sparse. Someone could have put video to work so much better here. Why not project an artist's interpretation of the famous room for me to walk through, rather than leaving me with a ghostly remnant? In the music section, why not offer us a reproduction of the ancient water organ Nero loved to play, or give us an audio track of what that instrument might have sounded like?
I felt that Nero's position in the arts was particularly underplayed. The section dedicated to the architecture he left behind in Rome … the Renaissance-era discovery of which sparked design trends that lasted for centuries… was beautifully designed to sit in an octagon beneath a gauzy dome. This mimics Nero's famous octagonal room with its rotating ceiling reflecting the heavens. But the materials on display below it were sparse. Someone could have put video to work so much better here. Why not project an artist's interpretation of the famous room for me to walk through, rather than leaving me with a ghostly remnant? In the music section, why not offer us a reproduction of the ancient water organ Nero loved to play, or give us an audio track of what that instrument might have sounded like?
The section on the great fire in Rome is where the exhibition really hits its stride. Here we do have a creative audio visual interpretation showing us the progress of the fire over days, with contemporary sources confirming Nero wasn't even in town when the fire started and revealing the help he gave to his people. An atmospheric soundtrack gives us the crackling of fire and distant screams of people running to safety. The show needed more moments like this.
The British Museum also missed a trick not finishing with an exploration of the impact Nero has had on Western culture. That was a surprise, considering the vast exhibition space seemed quite sparsely filled and the pop culture angle is a frequent closer there. We could have been treated to Nero on film (there is a large picture of Ustinov playing him at the shows entrance but we get no more of that), on stage and in music. Where were the box sets of I, Claudius in the gift shop? Monteverdi gave us a more-balanced-than-usual Nero in his Coronation of Poppea, and if had featured we could have been treated to one of the most beautiful duets in the whole operatic repertoire while enjoying the artefacts. And then there is the influence of the art and architecture. Think of the fiddly, brightly-coloured style of wall painting with garlands, arabesques, mythological characters and dancing goddesses, beloved of everyone from popes to English aristocrats to late 19th century hotel designers and you're thinking about copies of the paintings in Nero's palace. The original meaning of "grotesque" meant this style of design, from the cave or grotta, before it took on its more sinister meaning. Such an example of the shifting nature of language might have helped the argument about the shifting nature of Nero's reputation.
Granted, I know a lot more about Nero than the average punter. But my husband felt equally undernourished and unconvinced by what was on offer. It is a pretty show to look at, but we both wanted more depth.
We got it upstairs with Thomas Becket: Murder and the making of a saint. This may be because the curators aren’t trying to prove anything here. They are simply telling Thomas Becket story as most of us know from school, or from the epic film with Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, with artefacts, illuminated manuscripts, and video projections. (If you haven't seen the 1964 film, Becket, make the effort to do so before seeing the show to bring things to life.)
A series of medieval stained glass windows taken from Canterbury Cathedral, cleaned and restored for this show, is reason alone to make the effort to visit. They are exquisite, and provide a strong rebuttal to anyone waffling on about the blue in the windows at Chartes being unique to the French. Here is proof that the English could produce the same heavenly work. (We just lost so much more of it in our internal religious battles than the French did).
The windows, however, are late in the show, and there are plenty of goodies to fill your eyes until you get to them. Four knights murdered Becket in 1170 ... whether or not on the king's direct orders may never be resolved ... and canonised just three years later. His cult spread quickly across Europe, its flames fired by anyone who was for the pope or against England's Henry II. The king's estranged wife, the magnificent Eleanor of Aquitaine, and his daughters were active supporters of the new saint and Henry was generally held responsible for killing. His PR was so bad he opted for a spectacular show of public penance in 1174, submitting to a beating from the monks of Canterbury Cathedral.
We got it upstairs with Thomas Becket: Murder and the making of a saint. This may be because the curators aren’t trying to prove anything here. They are simply telling Thomas Becket story as most of us know from school, or from the epic film with Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, with artefacts, illuminated manuscripts, and video projections. (If you haven't seen the 1964 film, Becket, make the effort to do so before seeing the show to bring things to life.)
A series of medieval stained glass windows taken from Canterbury Cathedral, cleaned and restored for this show, is reason alone to make the effort to visit. They are exquisite, and provide a strong rebuttal to anyone waffling on about the blue in the windows at Chartes being unique to the French. Here is proof that the English could produce the same heavenly work. (We just lost so much more of it in our internal religious battles than the French did).
The windows, however, are late in the show, and there are plenty of goodies to fill your eyes until you get to them. Four knights murdered Becket in 1170 ... whether or not on the king's direct orders may never be resolved ... and canonised just three years later. His cult spread quickly across Europe, its flames fired by anyone who was for the pope or against England's Henry II. The king's estranged wife, the magnificent Eleanor of Aquitaine, and his daughters were active supporters of the new saint and Henry was generally held responsible for killing. His PR was so bad he opted for a spectacular show of public penance in 1174, submitting to a beating from the monks of Canterbury Cathedral.
Such a delicious scandal triggered the equivalent of a modern media feeding frenzy, with every artist of the time taking on the subject. It was an era of lush decoration in fabrics, interiors, reliquaries and vividly coloured illuminated manuscripts. The exhibition is full of examples. They illustrate Becket's story but are also lushly beautiful in their own right. (This is something that Nero, mostly full of austere statuary and architectural fragments, could not match.)
With these beautiful visual aids, the curators take us through Becket's youth, his unlikely conversion to servant of the church, his rivalry with the king and eventual death as a political martyr. The death itself is a dramatic midpoint of the exhibition, told through a striking animation. Afterward comes the explanation of his growing cult, and some interesting insight into its spread beyond England. There is a bit on the Canterbury Tales, of course, and a fabulous animation of what the shrine would have looked like in its glory days. Though, like Nero's Golden Palace down below, I think they missed the potential of the technology by not projecting a life-sized image for us to gawp at.
The smaller display space suited the story well, with each enclosed area revealing one chapter before you moved through into the next. It builds drama, and made the story more manageable. I suspect Nero suffered from the vast main exhibition area, and might have been better if broken into the same bite size chunks as the Becket show.
Either show is worth your time if you have an interest in their time periods, and both show how far curators working in the UK have come in the last decade with show design and storytelling. With current Covid regulations remaining in place until mid-July, they still offer the glorious opportunity to linger over displays without crowds.
Make Becket your priority not just because it is the slightly better show, but because it closes on 22 August. Nero and his world are with us until 24 October.
The smaller display space suited the story well, with each enclosed area revealing one chapter before you moved through into the next. It builds drama, and made the story more manageable. I suspect Nero suffered from the vast main exhibition area, and might have been better if broken into the same bite size chunks as the Becket show.
Either show is worth your time if you have an interest in their time periods, and both show how far curators working in the UK have come in the last decade with show design and storytelling. With current Covid regulations remaining in place until mid-July, they still offer the glorious opportunity to linger over displays without crowds.
Make Becket your priority not just because it is the slightly better show, but because it closes on 22 August. Nero and his world are with us until 24 October.
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