LONDON'S MUSEUMS
Snt,—While wishing both humbly and heartily to be numbered by Mr. Harold Nicolson among his own kind, that is to say, the eupeptics, may I now ask if he is wise to praise the present-day museums? After all, what are the unhappy facts? Many of the books of the British Museum have been destroyed and few of them seem to have been replaced. The Reading Room staff and their hidden colleagues of the catacombs are obviously diminished in numbers, and I sometimes fear in quality. Some of the cataloguing seems years out of date, and I understand the recent large and important Hirsch purchase may not be catalogued and available to the public for a long while. Otherwise the British Museum is still mainly shut. The Victoria and Albert Museum's desires for progress have been much retarded by the " Britain Can Make It " exhibition, whose selection of site is, in my opinion, unhappy and inconsiderate. The Benton Fletcher collection of old instruments, left to the National Trust and administered in part by Trinity College of Music, seems to have disappeared from the ken of man. The London Museum is now, and has been, used by all sorts of people, very few of them Londoners; and there is no sign that Londoners will ever recover the use of this palatial house, called sometimes York House and sometimes Lancaster House. At the Cabinet or Important Committee level one feels the Planning (one simply must use the capital) is superb. At the executive end it is clear that the action is always slow and often confused. This is the mark of our age.—Yours, &c.,
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