Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms

The world divides into those people who will happily go to events alone, and those who need company. I fall into the former category, which is a good thing as I am interested in a fair few things that M would consider among the deeper levels of hell. One of these is medieval history.

The British Library has had an Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition on display since October which I had been very much wanting to see. Time was beginning to run out as the exhibition ends next month, so on Thursday I took myself off to London to see it. Our trains to London run into a station handily placed just a five minute walk from the British Library, so I can be there in about an hour, door to door. My plan was to see the Anglo-Saxon exhibition in the morning, then to get lunch at either the British Library or the British Museum, and to go to the exhibition on Ashurbanipal and the Assyrians currently on at the British Museum in the afternoon if I had time. In fact the Anglo-Saxons exhibition took me so long to absorb that I ended up just having a quick wander round the free gallery at the British Library in the afternoon before heading home. Ashurbanipal will have to wait for another day - I do hope to make it though, as Ashurbanipal's library is one of my favourite exhibits at the British Museum and I would very much like to know more about him.

I was vaguely aware that the exhibition was an important one with much of the most important Anglo-Saxon material in the world brought together for the first time. I didn't buy a catalogue so working from memory here, but the list of items on display was pretty extraordinary. In no particular order it included:

• The earliest surviving copy of Bede's Ecclesiastical History
• Codex Amiatinus, the oldest complete Latin Bible (written on parchment so enormous, maybe 12 inches thick?) - made in England but now in Italy
• The oldest copy of the Rule of St. Benedict
• The Lindisfarne Gospels
• The earliest copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
• The earliest surviving letter in English
• The agreement between Alfred and Guthrum which established the Dane-law
• Domesday Book

These are just the tip of the iceberg - other items that I particularly liked were an Anglo-Saxon world map, a book personally annotated by both Saint Boniface and Saint Dunstan, and a beautifully illustrated herbal describing the uses of various plants (parsley for snake bites, apparently). There were also some artefacts on loan from museums, including sword embellishments from Sutton Hoo, part of the Staffordshire Hoard, and the Alfred Jewel (up there with Ashurbanipal's library as one of my all time favourite museum exhibits). Photography was not allowed, but here is a picture I took last year of the Alfred Jewel in its usual home, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

I have also added a couple of pictures from outside the British Library: a giant statue of Isaac Newton in the forecourt (above), and the roofline of St. Pancras railway station behind the modern library building. It was a beautiful, bright (but cold!) morning, with a perfectly clear blue sky.

The British Library has various articles and featured items from the exhibition on its website here.