ENJOYING THE BRITISH MUSEUM WITH THE WEASLEYS

Today, The Weasleys & The Grandma have visited the British Museum, a must in this city. They have spent a wonderful day between masterpieces of all time.

Before visiting this amazing place, the family has been practising Present Simple and the Adverbs of Frequency.

More information: AoF

The British Museum is a public institution dedicated to human history, art and culture and it is considered one of the most important museums of the world thanks to its more than two hundred thirty million objects.

The British Museum opened on a day like today in 1759 and The Grandma wants to commemorate this event talking about the Museum and its history.

The British Museum, in the Bloomsbury area of London, United Kingdom, is a public institution dedicated to human history, art and culture. Its permanent collection of some eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence, having been widely sourced during the era of the British Empire. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. It was the first public national museum in the world.

More information: British Musem

The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the Irish physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane.

It first opened to the public in 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building. Its expansion over the following 250 years was largely a result of expanding British colonisation and has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, the first being the Natural History Museum in 1881.

In 1973, the British Library Act 1972 detached the library department from the British Museum, but it continued to host the now separated British Library in the same Reading Room and building as the museum until 1997. The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and as with all national museums in the UK it charges no admission fee, except for loan exhibitions.

Its ownership of some of its most famous objects originating in other countries is disputed and remains the subject of international controversy, most notably in the case of the Parthenon Marbles.

Although today principally a museum of cultural art objects and antiquities, the British Museum was founded as a universal museum. Its foundations lie in the will of the Irish physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), a London-based doctor and scientist from Ulster.

During the course of his lifetime, and particularly after he married the widow of a wealthy Jamaican planter, Sloane gathered a large collection of curiosities and, not wishing to see his collection broken up after death, he bequeathed it to King George II, for the nation, for a sum of £20,000. At that time, Sloane's collection consisted of around 71,000 objects of all kinds including some 40,000 printed books, 7,000 manuscripts, extensive natural history specimens including 337 volumes of dried plants, prints and drawings including those by Albrecht Dürer and antiquities from Sudan, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Ancient Near and Far East and the Americas.

On 7 June 1753, King George II gave his Royal Assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. The British Museum Act 1753 also added two other libraries to the Sloane collection, namely the Cottonian Library, assembled by Sir Robert Cotton, dating back to Elizabethan times, and the Harleian Library, the collection of the Earls of Oxford. They were joined in 1757 by the Old Royal Library, now the Royal manuscripts, assembled by various British monarchs. Together these four foundation collections included many of the most treasured books now in the British Library including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving manuscript of Beowulf.

More information: British Museum-Youtube

The British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum -national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to the public and aiming to collect everything.

Sloane's collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests. The addition of the Cotton and Harley manuscripts introduced a literary and antiquarian element and meant that the British Museum now became both National Museum and library.

By the last years of the 19th century, The British Museum's collections had increased to the extent that its building was no longer large enough. In 1895 the trustees purchased the 69 houses surrounding the museum with the intention of demolishing them and building around the west, north and east sides of the museum. The first stage was the construction of the northern wing beginning 1906.

All the while, the collections kept growing. Emil Torday collected in Central Africa, Aurel Stein in Central Asia, D.G. Hogarth, Leonard Woolley and T. E. Lawrence excavated at Carchemish.

Around this time, the American collector and philanthropist J Pierpont Morgan donated a substantial number of objects to the museum, including William Greenwell's collection of prehistoric artefacts from across Europe which he had purchased for £10,000 in 1908. Morgan had also acquired a major part of Sir John Evans's coin collection, which was later sold to the museum by his son John Pierpont Morgan Junior in 1915.

In 1918, because of the threat of wartime bombing, some objects were evacuated via the London Post Office Railway to Holborn, the National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth) and a country house near Malvern.

On the return of antiquities from wartime storage in 1919 some objects were found to have deteriorated. A conservation laboratory was set up in May 1920 and became a permanent department in 1931. It is today the oldest in continuous existence. In 1923, the British Museum welcomed over one million visitors.

Today the museum no longer houses collections of natural history, and the books and manuscripts it once held now form part of the independent British Library.

More information: Smithsonian

The museum nevertheless preserves its universality in its collections of artefacts representing the cultures of the world, ancient and modern. The original 1753 collection has grown to over 13 million objects at the British Museum, 70 million at the Natural History Museum and 150 million at the British Library.

The Round Reading Room, which was designed by the architect Sydney Smirke, opened in 1857. For almost 150 years researchers came here to consult the museum's vast library. The Reading Room closed in 1997 when the national library (the British Library) moved to a new building at St Pancras. Today it has been transformed into the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Centre.

This department covers all levels of education, from casual visitors, schools, degree level and beyond. The museum's various libraries hold in excess of 350,000 books, journals and pamphlets covering all areas of the museum's collection.

Also the general museum archives which date from its foundation in 1753 are overseen by this department; the individual departments have their own separate archives and libraries covering their various areas of responsibility, which can be consulted by the public on application.

The Anthropology Library is especially large, with 120,000 volumes. However, the Paul Hamlyn Library, which had become the central reference library of the British Museum and the only library there freely open to the general public, closed permanently in August 2011. The website and online database of the collection also provide increasing amounts of information.

It is a point of controversy whether museums should be allowed to possess artefacts taken from other countries, and the British Museum is a notable target for criticism.

The Elgin Marbles, Benin Bronzes, Ethiopian Tabots and the Rosetta Stone are among the most disputed objects in its collections, and organisations have been formed demanding the return of these artefacts to their native countries of Greece, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Egypt respectively. Parthenon Marbles claimed by Greece were also claimed by UNESCO among others for restitution. From 1801 to 1812, Elgin's agents took about half of the surviving sculptures of the Parthenon, as well as sculptures from the Propylaea and Erechtheum.

In recent years, controversies pertaining to reparation of artefacts taken from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing during the Anglo-French invasion of China in 1860 have also begun to surface. Victor Hugo condemned the French and British for their plundering.

More information: The Culture Trip

The British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, among others, have been asked since 2009 to open their archives for investigation by a team of Chinese investigators as a part of an international mission to document lost national treasures. However, there have been fears that the United Kingdom may be asked to return these treasures.

The British Museum has refused to return these artefacts, stating that the restitutionist premise, that whatever was made in a country must return to an original geographical site, would empty both the British Museum and the other great museums of the world.

The museum has also argued that the British Museum Act of 1963 legally prevents any object from leaving its collection once it has entered it. Nevertheless, it has returned items such as the Tasmanian Ashes after a 20-year-long battle with Australia.

The British Museum continues to assert that it is an appropriate custodian and has an inalienable right to its disputed artefacts under British law.

In 2016, the British Museum moved its bag searches to marquees in the front courtyard and beside the rear entrance. This has been criticised by heritage groups as out-of-character with the historic building. The British Museum clarified that the change was purely logistical to save space in the main museum entrance and did not reflect any escalation in threat.

More information: My Modern Met

 

 

 It is a standing source of astonishment

and amusement to visitors that the British Museum

has so few British things in it: that it is a museum about

the world as seen from Britain rather than a history

focused on these islands.

Neil MacGregor

'A STUDY IN SCARLET', SHERLOCK HOLMES PREMIERE

On a day like today in 1930, Arthur Conan Doyle, the Scottish creator of Sherlock Holmes died in Crowborough, England. He left a legacy of great novels and great characters, and The Grandma wants to remember him talking about his first published novel with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, A Study in Scarlet.

A Study in Scarlet is an 1887 detective novel written by Arthur Conan Doyle.

The story marks the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who would become the most famous detective duo in popular fiction.

The book's title derives from a speech given by Holmes, a consulting detective, to his friend and chronicler Watson on the nature of his work, in which he describes the story's murder investigation as his study in scarlet: There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.

The story, and its main characters, attracted little public interest when it first appeared. Only 11 complete copies of the magazine in which the story first appeared, Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887, are known to exist now, and they have considerable value.

Although Conan Doyle wrote 56 short stories featuring Holmes, A Study in Scarlet is one of only four full-length novels in the original canon. The novel was followed by The Sign of the Four, published in 1890.  

A Study in Scarlet was the first work of detective fiction to incorporate the magnifying glass as an investigative tool.

Conan Doyle wrote the novel at the age of 27 in less than three weeks. As a general practice doctor in Southsea, Hampshire, he had already published short stories in several magazines of the day, such as the periodical London Society. 

The story was originally titled A Tangled Skein, and was eventually published by Ward Lock & Co. in Beeton's Christmas Annual 1887, after many rejections. The author received £25 in return for the full rights, although Conan Doyle had pressed for a royalty instead. It was illustrated by David Henry Friston.

The novel was first published as a book in July 1888 by Ward, Lock & Co., and featured drawings by the author's father, Charles Doyle.

More information: Grade Saver

In 1890, J. B. Lippincott & Co. released the first American version. Another edition published in 1891 by Ward, Lock & Bowden Limited (formerly Ward, Lock & Co.) was illustrated by George Hutchinson. A German edition of the novel published in 1902 was illustrated by Richard Gutschmidt. Numerous further editions, translations and dramatizations have appeared since. 

According to a Salt Lake City newspaper article, when Conan Doyle was asked about his depiction of the Latter-day Saints' organization as being steeped in kidnapping, murder and enslavement, he said: all I said about the Danite Band and the murders is historical, so I cannot withdraw that, though it is likely that in a work of fiction it is stated more luridly than in a work of history. It's best to let the matter rest.

Conan Doyle's daughter has stated: You know, father would be the first to admit that his first Sherlock Holmes novel was full of errors about the Mormons. 

More information: BBC

Historians speculate that Conan Doyle, a voracious reader, would have access to books by Fannie Stenhouse, William A. Hickman, William Jarman, John Hyde and Ann Eliza Young, among others, in explaining the author's early perspective on Mormonism.

Years after Conan Doyle's death, Levi Edgar Young, a descendant of Brigham Young and a Mormon general authority, claimed that Conan Doyle had privately apologized, saying that He [Conan Doyle] said he had been misled by writings of the time about the Church and had written a scurrilous book about the Mormons.

In August 2011, the Albemarle County, Virginia, School Board removed A Study in Scarlet from the district's sixth-grade required reading list following complaints from students and parents that the book was derogatory toward Mormons. It was moved to the reading lists for the tenth-graders, and remains in use in the school media centres for all grades.

Download A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

 It has long been an axiom of mine that
the little things are infinitely the most important.

Arthur Conan Doyle

DR JOHN H. WATSON, SHERLOCK HOLMES'S BEST FRIEND

Having tea with Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson

Today, The Grandma has received the amazing exciting wonderful visit of John H. Watson, aka Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes, the famous detective. They have been talking about The Watsons, The Grandma's new family in Sant Boi de Llobregat, and Dr Watson has explained her some secrets to help her family members to improve their English.

John H. Watson, known as Dr Watson, is a fictional character in the Sherlock Holmes stories created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Watson is Sherlock Holmes' friend, assistant and sometime flatmate, and the first person narrator of all but four of these stories.

He is described as a typical Victorian-era gentleman, unlike the more eccentric Holmes. He is astute, although he fails to match his friend's deductive skills. Whilst retaining his role as Holmes's friend and confidant, Watson has been adapted in various films, television series, video games, comics and radio programmes.

In Conan Doyle's early rough plot outlines, Sherlock Holmes's associate was named Ormond Sacker before Conan Doyle finally settled on John Watson. He was probably inspired by one of Doyle's colleagues, Dr James Watson. 

More information: Arthur Conan Doyle

William L. DeAndrea wrote that Watson also serves the important function of catalyst for Holmes's mental processes... From the writer's point of view, Doyle knew the importance of having someone to whom the detective can make enigmatic remarks, a consciousness that's privy to facts in the case without being in on the conclusions drawn from them until the proper time. Any character who performs these functions in a mystery story has come to be known as a 'Watson'.

Dr Watson's first name is mentioned on only four occasions. Part one of the very first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, is subtitled Being a reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., Late of the Army Medical Department.

Sherlock Holmes & Dr. John H. Watson

The preface of the collection His Last Bow is signed John H. Watson, M.D., and in The Problem of Thor Bridge, Watson says that his dispatch box is labelled John H. Watson, M.D.

His wife Mary Watson appears to refer to him as James in The Man with the Twisted Lip; Dorothy L. Sayers speculates that Mary may be using his middle name Hamish (an Anglicisation of Sheumais, the vocative form of Seumas, the Scottish Gaelic for James), though Doyle himself never addresses this beyond including the initial. David W. Merrell, on the other hand, concludes that Mary is not referring to her husband at all but rather to (the surname of) their servant.

In 1881, Watson is introduced by his friend Stamford to Sherlock Holmes, who is looking for someone to share rent at a flat in 221B Baker Street. Concluding that they are compatible, they subsequently move into the flat. When Watson notices multiple eccentric guests frequenting the flat, Holmes reveals that he is a consulting detective and that the guests are his clients.

Throughout Doyle's novels, Watson is presented as Holmes's biographer. At the end of the first published Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, Watson is so incensed by Scotland Yard's claiming full credit for its solution that he exclaims: Your merits should be publicly recognised. You should publish an account of the case. If you won't, I will for you. Holmes suavely responds: You may do what you like, Doctor. Therefore, the story is presented as a reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson, and most other stories of the series share this by implication.

More information: Sherlockian

A Study in Scarlet, having just returned from Afghanistan, John Watson is described as thin as a lath and as brown as a nut. In subsequent texts, he is variously described as strongly built, of a stature either average or slightly above average, with a thick, strong neck and a small moustache.

Watson used to be an athlete: it is mentioned in The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire (1924) that he used to play rugby union for Blackheath, but he fears his physical condition has declined since that point. In The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton (1899), Watson is described as a middle-sized, strongly built man—square jaw, thick neck, moustache... In His Last Bow, set in August 1914, Watson is described as ...a heavily built, elderly man with a grey moustache....

John Watson is intelligent, if lacking in Holmes's insight, and serves as a perfect foil for Holmes: the archetypal late Victorian/Edwardian gentleman against the brilliant, emotionally detached analytical machine. Furthermore, he is considered an excellent doctor and surgeon, especially by Holmes.

For instance, in The Adventure of the Dying Detective, Holmes creates a ruse that he is deathly ill to lure a suspect to his presence, which must fool Watson as well during its enactment. To that effect in addition to elaborate makeup and starving himself for a few days for the necessary appearance, Holmes firmly claims to Watson that he is highly contagious to the touch, knowing full well that the doctor would immediately deduce his true medical condition upon examination.

Download A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

My dear Watson, you were born to be a man of action.

Your instinct is always to do something energetic.

Sherlock Holmes

THE GRANDMA REMEMBERS THE HOLMES: 221B BAKER ST

Sherlock Holmes

Today, The Grandma has started to read a new story about Sherlock Holmes, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Grandma has chosen this book because she loves Sherlock and his stories and because she wants to remember one of her beautiful families, The Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes has his headquarters in 221B Baker Street and The Grandma wants to talk about this amazing place. Before starting the new book, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Grammar 50).

More information: Prepositions and Adverbials of Place and Position

221B Baker Street is the London address of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, created by author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the United Kingdom, postal addresses with a number followed by a letter may indicate a separate address within a larger, often residential building. Baker Street in the late 19th century was a high-class residential district, and Holmes' flat would probably have been part of a Georgian terrace.

At the time the Holmes stories were published, addresses in Baker Street did not go as high as 221. Baker Street was later extended, and in 1932 the Abbey National Building Society moved into premises at 219–229 Baker Street. For many years, Abbey National employed a full-time secretary to answer mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes.

In 1990, a blue plaque signifying 221B Baker Street was installed at the Sherlock Holmes Museum, situated elsewhere on the same block, and there followed a 15-year dispute between Abbey National and the Holmes Museum for the right to receive mail addressed to 221B Baker Street. Since the closure of Abbey House in 2005, ownership of the address by the Holmes Museum has not been challenged, despite its location between 237 and 241 Baker Street.

Sherlock Holmes

When the Sherlock Holmes stories were first published, street numbers in Baker Street did not go as high as 221. The section north of Marylebone Road near Regent's Park -now including 221 Baker Street -was known in Conan Doyle's lifetime as Upper Baker Street. In his first manuscript, Conan Doyle put Holmes' house in Upper Baker Street.

However, a British crime novelist named Nigel Morland claimed that, late in Conan Doyle's life, he identified the junction of Baker Street and George Street, about 500 metres south of the Marylebone Road, as the location of 221B. Sherlockian experts have also held to alternative theories as to where the original 221B was located and have maintained that it was further down Baker Street.

When street numbers were reallocated in the 1930s, the block of odd numbers from 215 to 229 was assigned to an Art Deco building known as Abbey House, constructed in 1932 for the Abbey Road Building Society, which the society and its successor, which subsequently became Abbey National plc, occupied until 2002.

More information: Sherlock Holmes Museum

Almost immediately, the building society started receiving correspondence from Sherlock Holmes fans all over the world, in such volumes that it appointed a permanent secretary to Sherlock Holmes to deal with it. A bronze plaque on the front of Abbey House carried a picture of Holmes and a quotation, but was removed from the building several years ago. Its present whereabouts are unknown. In 1999, Abbey National sponsored the creation of a bronze statue of Sherlock Holmes that now stands at the entrance to Baker Street Underground station.

The Sherlock Holmes Museum is situated within an 1815 townhouse very similar to the 221B described in the stories and is located between 237 and 241 Baker Street. It displays exhibits in period rooms, wax figures and Holmes memorabilia, with the famous study overlooking Baker Street the highlight of the museum. The description of the house can be found throughout the stories, including the 17 steps leading from the ground-floor hallway to the first-floor study.

Sherlock Holmes & Dr Watson

According to the published stories, 221B Baker Street was a suite of rooms on the first floor of a lodging house above a flight of 17 steps. The main study overlooked Baker Street, and Holmes' bedroom was adjacent to this room at the rear of the house, with Dr. Watson's bedroom being on the floor above, overlooking a rear yard that had a plane tree in it.

The street number 221B was assigned to the Sherlock Holmes Museum on 27 March 1990, replacing the logical address 239 Baker Street, when the Leader of Westminster City Council, Lady Shirley Porter, unveiled a blue plaque signifying the address of 221B Baker Street. She was invited to renumber the museum's building to coincide with its official opening and because the number 221B had not been included in the original planning consent for the museum granted in October 1989.

More information: Smithsonian

A long-running dispute over the number arose between the Sherlock Holmes Museum, the building society Abbey National, which had previously answered the mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes, and subsequently the local Westminster City Council. The main objection to the Museum's role in answering the letters was that the number 221B bestowed on the Museum by the Council was out of sequence with the other numbers in the street: an issue that has since vexed local bureaucrats, who have striven for years to keep street numbers in sequence.

In 2005, Abbey National vacated their headquarters in Baker Street, which left the museum to battle with Westminster City Council to end the dispute over the number, which had created negative publicity. Eventually the museum was granted special permission by the City of Westminster to bear the address of 221B Baker Street.

More information: Atlas Obscura

My name is Sherlock Holmes.

It is my business to know what other people don’t know.

Sherlock Holmes

012, EMERGENCY SERVICE: HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Paula Bond and King Kong in NYC

Today, The Bonds are still in Washington. They are practising some vocabulary about justice and Social English about requesting and offering. 

They are very interested in creating good compositions, this is the reason because of they are working with the connectors.

More info: Justice System Vocabulary

Paula Bond is with the family again after spending some days in the Empire State with King Kong, her new friend from Skull Island. 

After talking about sugar and its benefits in our lives, remembering Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his famous character Sherlock Holmes, the family are learning how to use their twitter accounts.

Jaume Bond and his new friend

After that, The Grandma is talking about Romanesque Art in the exile around the world because of the war and she is explaining a story about Roman superstitions.

Finally, Jaume Bond is explaining his experience face to face with a hurt bird which reborn after phoning to emergency services and The Grandma is remembering some beautiful songs of Leonard Cohen and Barbara.

Tomorrow, the family is meeting Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in the FBI Headquarters. Together, they're going to investigate voodoo practices and how to prevent them.

May you need some needles...

 No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.

Bob Dylan

EUROVISION SONG CONTEST: WHAT'S THE PRESSURE

Today, The Poppins have revised some new grammar like Prepositions of Time and Place, Too and Enough. They have been doing some exercises about Social English they have been writing about to search Nessie or not. 

It has been an intensive day because tomorrow, they’re preparing their songs to participate in Eurovision.

More information: Too & Enough

They have been talking about Salvador Dalí and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle two geniuses who changed painting and writing with his surrealistic pictures, the first, and with his fantastic character of Sherlock Holmes, the second.

More information: Prepositions of Time & Prepositions of Place

Next, they have been talking about security in the cities and strange situations which haven’t got any explication or meaning and about the importance of having as information as you can in all the aspects of life to try to have more possibilities of success.

Finally, they have discussed about kinds of pens and their advantages and disadvantages.

Tomorrow, the family is going to prepare Eurovision and they’re talking about the next travel to Australia.

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. 

Herman Melville 

THE GATHERING. IN THE END, THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE

Highlanders, Scotland

After centuries of duelling to survive against others like him, an immortal Scottish swordsman faces his final opponent: a bloodthirsty barbarian who has chased him across time to 1985 New York City, where they fight for the Prize: the spiritual ability to know everything.

The Grandma has been visiting Scotland these last days. Homeland of Sean Connery, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, a special person for The Holmes, Walter Scott, Annie Lennox, Rod Stewart or Amy MacDonald, Scotland is a country where History and Tradition are mixed creating an incredible atmosphere.

She has had a meeting with Connor MacLeod, an old friend of her. After talking about the beauty of Scottish Highlands and the last studies about the existence of Nessie, they were to a bagpipe concert.

Today, The Grandma is in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. She’s enjoying Scottish hospitality and buying tonnes of Scottish herbs, her favourite drink.

Despite of this travel, The Grandma continues in her search of new material to The Holmes. In this case, again, to prepare the listening part, some audios about Express English. 

BBC–Express English

Who wants to live forever,
Who wants to live forever,
Forever is our today,
Who waits forever anyway?

 Queen