To my shame, I have never previously been to the Petrie Museum in spite of having spent a great amount of my life in its neighbourhood. The truth is that I never knew where it was, not easily accessible from University College’s great courtyard on Gower Street, but up what feels like a back alley off Torrington Place. But it’s amazing when you get there – such an incredibly rich, apparent jumble, but actually ordered collection of tightly packed objects, many still with hand-written labels, deeply old-fashioned, but so old-fashioned as to be itself a form of archaeology, conveying the wealth and depth of Egyptian antiquities in a closely confined space.

I remember that Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones were hired to re-present the collection more than twenty years ago. I wonder what happened to that project.

Here is an interesting moral dilemma for architects. The forthcoming competition to redevelop the British Museum will be amongst the biggest, most interesting and most prestigious not just in the UK, but in the world. But in my experience, architects are more concerned and more aware of the relationship between buildings and climate change than most, as reflected in the declaration Architects Declare UK, which was instigated by Haworth Tompkins, one of the best and most thoughtful UK practices which might – and should – be considered. So, this may subtly influence and limit the field of practices who are considered to the British Museum’s detriment. Herzog & de Meuron are available because they haven’t signed the declaration. But most UK practices have.

Before someone points it out on my behalf, I worked very happily with BP as a sponsor in the 1990s, but times are changing, in a way that the trustees of the British Museum have chosen rather aggressively to ignore.

https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/2024/01/architects-may-boycott-british-museum-over-bp-deal/#msdynttrid=vRZ0-2pn9_CGyfsrzRgp0CjAsi2p66LvY_9JvFHx8_c

As I expected, I have got into trouble for liking Saltburn from friends, most of whom thought it was terrible; but I liked it – a romp.

As has been correctly pointed out, I apologised for liking it from a mixture of puritanism – it’s so magnificently over-the-top – and possibly a bit of snobbery, seeing Brideshead Revisited converted for Gen Z.

By chance, I was the first in the queue for manuscripts on November 6th., the day the British Library closed down all services apart from its café and ordering books published before 1972. I was hoping to be first in the queue tomorrow when some level of service is set to resume, but can’t make it.

The article below is a good summary of the issues: the strangeness that so little attention has been paid to a Russian cyber attack on a major national institution, including the theft and publication of confidential information; and the tendency, as probably was inevitable in the current climate of disinformation, for the British Library itself not to have made clear at once the full gravity of the situation, somehow suggesting that it remained open, in spite of its core functions having been totally shut down.

I have some sympathy for the hard-pressed staff, but it would be interesting to know what their disaster plan recommended and it doesn’t seem particularly sensible to have kept the staff in the dark, not to mention readers.

https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/british-library-cyber-hack-rhysida-ransomware-tom-holland-b1131623.html

We went to Saltburn last night. It was packed. I’m afraid I enjoyed it very much – a cross between The Go-Between and The Draughtsman’s Contract, but much more gothic than either, more decadent, and more over-the-top. I particularly admired the way that Drayton House was used for much of the film, an appropriately ripe set of English baroque interiors, especially brilliant in the scene of Oliver’s arrival at the front door, but also in the many scenes of the garden with statuary by John Nost playing a prominent part in the background.