National Portrait Gallery - London, UK

17th January 2014 - Free

Joena Lisa, Joena Lisa 
men have named you

Britain, ey? What are we like? Well, we’re a bit like France, a lot like America, some like Germany with a little bit of Irish thrown in. In fact, name a country, we’re more like them than not. Some would say Britain's the last bastion of chivalry, galloping through the ages like Boudicca in her chariot - the most over-achieving land on God’s green. Others say we’re the result of geographic fortune in our isolation that meant a strong navy and lucky winds stopped many invasions and said ships could double up as hulking great slaving vessels, bursting with their quarry. The folks at the National Portrait Gallery have committed to showing us the faces of those who've built this ragtag, past-tense, tin-island empire that sixty million of us call home.

For reasons way too boring to bother you with now, I was up at the crack of dawn on the day of my visit and was, subsequently, the first person through the gates. I could have run to the centre of the gallery and shouted “first!” like those absolute FANNIES do on the internet, but I really didn't want to. 

Sherlock Holmes Museum - London, UK

6th January 2014 - £8

The Desolation of Smug

A new year, a new season of Sherlock, the BBC’s much-hallowed flagship drama, and it appears the seams in the deer-stalker are starting to fray. Silly motorbike chases, oh so sentimental asides (we get it, they’re friends) and a worrying lack of puzzles only a genius could solve have left a pretty special show feeling less Twin Peaks and more Peak Practice. I’m clearly in a minority over this, however, as on my first attempted visit to the Sherlock Holmes Museum the queue stretched from 221B to Madame Tussaud’s. You can sing for that, I thought, but promised that “Joseph Deeney will return!” and return he did, the day after the disastrous second episode and finally I was in league with the common man as the queue had dissipated to a manageable half an hour.

Steve & Joe Talk Museums in 2013 at the Royal Festival Hall - London, UK

14th December 2013 - Gawd Bless Us... Every one.

Christmas hero Steve Slack and I talk 
all things museums and galleries in 2013. Merry Christmas, smellies!

The Jewish Museum - London, UK

14th November 2013 - £7.50

גוט־מאָרגן דו

Camden Town. Playground of the eager tourist and the desperate Londoner. Where the streets are paved with pavement. The land of goths, dreadful Irish bars, and that infuriating guy who sits by the bridge, hawking the plastic yolks you put in your mouth to make bird noises. Where better then to house the nation's flagship museum of history's most persecuted religion?

From the word go, I was bowled over by how kind everyone was at The Jewish Museum: the cloakroom lady, security guard, the man behind the till. I felt like a nephew who'd been away and "never calls and never writes". Ok, I'll stop stereotyping. After this: entrance isn't free. There. It's over. The fee's not a problem though, as the museum's a registered charity and I shouldn't laugh because a Yorkshireman poking fun at spurious claims of Jewish thriftiness has a distinct glass houses/stones smell about it. 

The Design Museum - London, UK

22nd October 2013 - £11.85 (joined by Amanda Leat and Farhad Agzamov)

Cool Joe

By creepy old uncle Thames, in Tower Bridge's meagre winter shadow, sits the old banana factory that now houses London's glittering Design Museum. I'll say this, right off the bat: I don't really care for this kind of thing. Perhaps my ambivalence renders an opinion of said institution obsolete, but I believe great museums should have the power to convert the heathen (like the National Railway Museum).

Our entry was inauspicious due to the surprisingly hefty queue for the relatively small space, perhaps adding credence to the museum's proposed move in 2014 to Kensington (an area, I'm sure you'll agree, in desperate need of a museum or two). The entrance was a little steep, granted, but they receive no government subsidies, are relatively transparent as far as their finances go and they do a lot for the world of design so I'll let it slide. For now. 

Sir John Soane's Museum & Hunterian Museum (The Battle of Lincoln's Inn Fields) - London, UK

15th October 2013

Tucked between the financial and legal bustle of Chancery Lane and Kingsway, sits Lincoln's Inn Fields, the largest public square in Old London Town. Between 11 and 2 it serves as a leafy respite for young, bonny, soon-to-be-rich law students to drink coffee and talk loudly on their telephones. I enjoy the place for its myriad institutions and the people they attract: LSE - students, RCS - doctors, Queen Mary's - lawyers, the soup van - homeless people. 

Cliffe Castle Museum - Keighley, UK

3rd September 2013, Free (joined by Shelagh Deeney)

If they could see me now...

Cliffe Castle has always been a bit of a joke in our bustling metropolis of Bradford. Way out in the muddy backwaters of Keighley, we sophisticates saw nothing but a big house full of junk you'd find in your granddad's loft. I'm as guilty of this as anyone, a result of being dragged as a pre-teen on boring school trips through dusty corridors I'd seen a million times. That Tuesday morning was the last day of the school holidays in the region and you could tell, casualties of the never-ending summers you remember forever were everywhere. I empathised entirely. I know exactly how you feel, mate: school tomorrow and you're in Cliffe Castle. It was my mother's last day before the new term, so we celebrated by visiting a museum 100 metres away from the school in which she teaches, which was a noble sacrifice, indeed.