The Professor's Wife: University College of London and British Museum

The British Museum

Like the Smithsonian in Washington, the national museums are free. There is always a container to add a 5 pound donation but except for special exhibits there is no cost to enter the museums. This has

made our stay here even more enjoyable. We returned to the British Museum and enjoyed looking

at some areas we had not seen recently. Of course, my problem is that I have no trouble getting stuck looking at ceramics while the Professor is interested in moving on. We went to Thailand many years

ago and my one regret is that I did not buy a piece of Celadon pottery.

The British Museum has some beautiful Celadon (bluish green) pottery from Korea.

The huge collection of Chinese porcelain was collected by Sir Percival David. There are over 17,000 pieces. The collection was donated in 1950 but it was not until 2007 that the collection was moved to the British Museum "on a long term loan."

As you can see though, I went straight to the Korean Celadon porcelain and ignored the ancient pieces of Blue and White Chinese Pottery.

Looking down on the main floor. The Australian exhibit is gone and only a few totems remain.

I browsed in the museum shop for a few minutes and looked at some wonderful children's books. I could kick myself now for not buying some of them to share with my grandchildren. So many of them are only available in Britain. Not on Amazon.com.

We passed this car on our way back to the BYU Centre. Of course, we think it was made for

the Professor. A note about cars: the BYU Centre is in a very pricey section of London. However almost none of the housing has a garage. As a result it is not uncommon to see very expensive cars parked in our neighborhood. Simply because there is nowhere else to park them. Or possibly because these rich owners do not want to pay to house their cars in a garage miles and miles away. Almost every evening we can count on at least one car alarm being triggered. Gets old really fast.

This is Jeremy Bentham. He was a philosopher and jurist who requested that his body be preserved when he died. His surgeon friend complied with his request. However, his face was too grotesque so a clay model was made to replace it. The only part of Jeremy that you can see that actually belonged to him is his hair. He now resides in a glass cubicle at the University College of London.