Unsigned I have just managed to track down the exhibi-
tion of water colours and drawings—anyone you care to name between Fra Angelico and Turner —at the British Museum. Acting on information from at least five helpful attendants, none of whom seemed willing or perhaps able to direct me further than the eye could see (which, except in the King's Library, is not very far on the tor- tuous route from the entrance hall to the print room), I finally got there and recommend the trip to anyone with time to spare. But, if we can't have posters on hoardings in Oxford Street, couldn't we perhaps have signposts in the Museum itself? Which reminds me that the brush-strokes on the posters advertising the Chinese Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert, though doubtless enough to take a connoisseur's breath away, are not immediately alluring to people like me. And it is precisely people like me for whom the paintings are designed, and who ought at all costs to have been lured, inveigled and enticed to visit the exhibition. The hand- scrolls and album leaves were made for harassed civil servants, and others tied to their desks in the capital, to satisfy our hankerings after retreats
in the spring hills, plum blossoms by moonlight, streams and hills under fresh snow, and above all the sound of the fisherman's flute heard over the water...
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