Museums - Archive Articles

A chance to walk through the Thames Railway Tunnel

This coming May Bank Holiday will offer an exceptionally rare opportunity to walk through Brunel's original tunnel under the Thames.

A new gallery opens at the British Museum

The British Museum has been refurbishing one of its galleries, and it has just opened to the public. Away with the tired old carpets and the gloomy oppressive cabinets cluttered up with as much as possible.

London Street Views from 1840

Long before Google drove around in camera wielding cars, or Charles Booth's poverty mapping, or Phyllis Pearsall (didn't) walk the streets of London, there was John Tallis.

Take a “Farewell Tour” around the Tube Network

London Underground will be running one of their farewell tours that they have been organising whenever a train model goes out of service.

Open days at the Transport Museum’s overflow warehouse

Next weekend will mark the occasional opening of the Transport Museum's overflow warehouse out in darkest Acton, and if you haven't been, then it is worth a trip.

Britain: One Million Years of the Human Story

What would a timeline through a million years of the history of Britain look like? Well, mostly ice, and mostly not Britain, thanks to the vagaries of climate change over the aeon.

War! What is it Good for? Exhibitions! That’s What!

Such is the theme of a display at the Museum of Childhood that asks in that hang-wringing angst way that this particular museum is particularly skilled at -- should children play at war?

Charles Darwin’s head to be eaten by a colony of ants

A series of sculptures created using robotics, live insects and crochet are being put on display in a new exhibition based around Charles Darwin's face.

Chance to go inside a disused tube station

Of the closed tube stations that litter the London Underground, two top the list of stations that people want to visit.

Chance to help clean a rusting WW2 German bomber

Anyone with an interest in military history, or probably in history in general will be aware that last year the RAF Museum recovered the only known intact Dornier Do 17 bomber that had managed to crash land upside down just off the coast of Kent.

Pigeon shit as jewellery

If someone issued a commission to jewellers to come up with something that says "London" to the viewer, I am sure we would be inundated with a swathe of humdrum tourist snaps and stereotypes.

Twinings Tiny Treasure House of Tea

One of London's smallest museums can be found in one of its oldest and smallest retail outlets, and is devoted to that most English of pastimes, the cup of tea.

Cheap tickets to see the Cheapside Hoard

A date for your diaries, albeit likely to be a very busy day as the Museum of London is having one of its occasional "pay what you can" days for its major exhibitions.

Cmdr Hadfield visits London’s Science Museum

If you're a guitar playing, book plugging astronaut, then one of the best places in London other than a bookshop to sell books is probably the Science Museum.

Museum visitors have poorer memory if they take photos of exhibits

A study has claimed that people who take photos of exhibits in museums or galleries have a worse memory about their visit than those who walk around without a camera.

Steam Trains Return to the London Underground

An early Christmas treat -- as on Sunday 8th December, for the first time since 1992 and possibly the last time ever, London Transport Museum will be running steam trains to Uxbridge along the Metropolitan line.

Look out for a tube map decorated freight train

If you were waiting for a train in select parts of London around lunchtime today, you might have seen a locomotive covered in a tube map pulling some carriages, and two Sir Peter Hendys.

Wildlife Photography at the Natural History Museum

As someone who takes a fair amount of photos for this blog, I have a tendency to wander around places snapping away like mad at anything and everything that looks vaguely interesting, then getting home and working out which of the 600 photos are any good.

The mysterious Cheapside Hoard goes on display at last

A historical mystery has gone on display at the Museum of London as the greatest collection of Elizabethan and and Stuart period jewellery has been laid out for the first time in a hundred years.

Chance to go inside a disused tube station

Of the closed tube stations that litter the London Underground, two top the list of stations that people want to visit. One is Down Street, near Hyde Park as it was used as a WW2 command centre, and the other…

80th anniversary of the closure of the British Museum tube station

On this morning 80 years ago, just after midnight, a tube station closed its doors for the very last time, and a few hours later, two new platforms came into use at another station just a couple of hundred yards away.

Estuary at the Docklands Museum

An exhibition has opened in a museum, that is being advertised by bright garish black on yellow posters around London. It's an exhibition about a landscape that is usually devoid of bright garish colours.

Wrapping paper for science geeks

I don't buy presents very often, but am the sort of person who tends to give almost as much effort into getting the most appropriate wrapping paper and gift card as I do to the present itself.

Photography forbidden in the British Museum’s Islamic Gallery

If you enter the British Museum by its back entrance, then as you pass through the foyer usually full of tourist groups and school children to get to the exhibitions, you might be forgiven for not noticing that there is a side door here that leads to a rather good display room.