Exhibiting the John Murray Archive

The Scotsman reports on the John Murray Archive exhibition at the National Library of Scotland, which is doing everything in its power to bring alive the 150,000 documents and papers in the archive for which it paid £31 million 18 months ago. Original letters from Charles Darwin, David Livingstone, Lord Byron, and others are on show with sophisticated touch screens, interactive sound effects, and false windows made from flat-screen televisions. Martyn Wade, the library’s chief executive, said: “This is to encourage people who would not normally go into the reading room, people that wonder what the archive’s about. It’s important that they can actually look at the originals.”

The exhibition was opened yesterday by writer, broadcaster and former Python Michael Palin. “For a traveller and a writer like myself the John Murray archive is a mouth-watering prospect,” he said.

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