EXHIBITION
Notable Documents From Private Archives. (Old Hall, Lincoln's Inn.) To one to whom it comes hard to find letters of even last week this exhibition of documents from private owners ranging over eight centuries of our national life is a wonder to behold. I expect the State to look after its papers and records, but when private owners can put on a show such as this I feel remarkably conscious of the debt in history that the nation owes, not to its Governments, not to the State, but to the vast number of individual subjects who, through the years, have carried out the chores of local and national life. This exhibition has been arranged by the Historical Manuscripts Commission as part of the Festival of Britain. The documents on show are limited to those in private ownership today. In some ways this .limitation is a pity—no public records are shown, nor the contents of any parish chests—but there are numerous public docu- ments which have found their way into private hands. Archives are interpreted in their widest sense, and exhibits range from twelfth- century manuscripts to an aerial survey of the present day. Every- thing is displayed and catalqued so clearly that the visitor can appreciate even the most esoterical exhibits. In a year of exhibitions it is refreshing to find one that shows us so modestly the sources of history, without sentiment, without labouring its points, and, perhaps most important of all, without ignoring the present. JAMES Nowen..
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