The British Museum: 250 Years on. (Frontline)

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IN 2003 THE BRITISH MUSEUM celebrates its 250th anniversary. To coincide with this occasion a former Director, David Wilson, has written a major new history of the Museum.

The death of Sir Hans Sloane, at the age of ninety-two, on January 11th, 1753, triggered the foundation of one of the great intellectual institutions of the world--the British Museum. Sloane's will, constructed with tortuous political savvy, provided trustees of power and experience whose duty it was to save his large collection for the nation. The collection befitted Sloane's position as a leading figure of the European Enlightenment; although based in natural history, it had been considerably leavened over his lifetime by the careful--if almost wholesale--acquisition of antiquities, manuscripts, printed books, coins, medals, drawings and prints.

The trustees of his will set to work with energy and expedition. The king, consulted almost immediately, `doubted whether there was money sufficient in the exchequer' to support Sloane's ideas, …