university. The museum had a definitive moment during the French Revolution, when the revolutionaries discovered an alternative to vandalizing the images and icons of the old regime: neutralizing them by placing them in the Louvre, which was transformed from a palace into a museum.

The Thames is England’s longest archaeological landscape and thousands of the objects that fill our museums have come from its foreshore. Among them are numerous Bronze and Iron Age swords, shields and spears that were found along the stretch between Vauxhall and Teddington and include the famous Battersea Shield.

on the casket is a roundel depicting a Bronze Age urn, a mace-head and a skull; a sword buried underground; a pick and theodolite – archaeological finds and tools. ‘This must be Pitt Rivers.’