It was as ever a pleasure to be able to wander round the back regions of the Soane Museum where Soane displayed his best antiquities alongside plaster casts in layer upon layer up into the dome, presided over by Francis Chantrey’s bust of himself (as Chantrey wrote on 5 April 1829, ‘Whether the bust…shall be considered like John Soane or Julius Caesar is a point that cannot be determined by either you or me. I will, however, maintain that as a work of art I have never produced a better’):-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
The Soane is indeed one of the best and most original museums in London.
A Royal Academician, of course !, an RA gold medallist. pupil of George Dance. Later, Professor of Architecture at the RA. Soane was a classicist and a scholar, yet no objects in the museum are labelled, and it is an amazing jumble of the priceless and the worthless, the fake and the real, the ancient and the modern.
Yes, I love it, always have done and always will. Charles
It may be my favourite Museum of any sort anywhere. Others are larger or more resplendent with the art treasures of the world, but none is more individual, brilliant, odd, and utterly delightful at every turn.
My favourite museum is Kettle’s Yard but the Soane museum comes a close second. Both share an individual, idiosyncratic aspect of collecting.
Interesting. Wish we there for the exhibition. We visited the Soane museum some years ago while in London and thoroughly enjoyed it and then last year, we fortuitously came across his tomb in St Pancras Old Church while looking for Mary Shelley. Earlier this year we visited 18 Stafford Terrace for the first time and found that quite intriguing.