Brought together from all over the place to tell the story of the beginnings of English, one can't be less than impressed with a show like this.
£16 even seems fair enough for two hours of gazing, not really comprehendingly, at these venerable books, documents and artefacts. And I'm not usually one to look for longer than I have to so the serious student might take longer to have a proper look.
An item of Kentish law code, c.600, was said to be the earliest evidence of 'English', not that one could hope to make sure the people of Kent were behaving themselves by reference to it now. Then Gildas lambasts the Romano-British c.540, who brought on the wrath of God by their louche, lax behaviour and thus caused the Saxon invasion. You can't say he didn't understand cause and effect.
Similarly, Bede reports that the Synod of Whitby in 664 debated the date of Easter, thus bringing about a solar eclipse and plague. We meddle with the Gods at our peril, or did then.
And what a doorstopper could be made of the Codex Amiatinus, the earliest complete Latin Bible, C8th. It would be impractical to expect Amazon to deliver you one of those by post and I'm glad it wasn't our O level set book.
I had been unaware that there had been established an Archbishop of Lichfield in order to facilitate poltical maneouvring and outvote Canterbury, was it.
Offa turns up and manages Mercia to challenge Northumbria's hold on the title. And while we are wondering where the North Saxons were because there might be Essex, Sussex, Wessex and Middlesex, there isn't a Nessex, we might wonder how much further north of Umbria Northumbria is.
It could also be thought, with no academic justification whatsoever, that some of the patternings on illuminated texts resemble the islamic embroiderings in mosques and perhaps Old English script, immaculate as these documents are invariably scribed, looks a bit like Arabic.
Athelstan, as set out by Michael Wood in the TLS recently, can be credited with being that good thing, a bookish ruler and the climax, after listening to some convincing Old English on a recording, is the Domesday Book open at a page about Euruiscire, which is still very much how Yorkshire is pronounced in certain parts.
Sadly it didn't have Geoffrey Boycott's batting average for that season.
So, top marks, or something very like it on a day when a top, top girl meets up for lunch, consisting of a cup of tea and the not-quite-so-distant past floods back not in document form but in the vibrant, living flesh. Which highlighted how the old books, tremendous though they may be, only conjure ghosts and one ought not to forget how good some select examples of the living still are and we neglect them only at our own cost.
With time to pay homage in another room to Bach, Handel, Mozart and Beethoven, listen to Virginia (unbelievably posh) and Jimmy Joyce (wonderful and Irish beyond one's English comprehension) and check out what a luxury volume a 1623 first folio was, there is no way I could possibly go to London on the coach for a third day running tomorrow, not even if Prince, Bach and Mozart were Al Green's backing band in a recreation of Cliff's Greatest Hits.
But you put in the effort and you get the rewards, you really do, and it was worth it. I hope the office is kind to me for three days before the next big, spoilt indulgence of Ascot on Saturday. I know I should be more grateful. I will be when I know I've survived.
