Samarkand, spices, caravanserai, camels; we are on the Silk Road. So much more romantic then its modern manifestation: China’s Belt and Road project.
Silk Roads is the blockbuster on at The British Museum until 23rd February next year. The critics love it. The Guardian promises visitors will be mesmerised and transported into “a fairytale of magic and beauty, as you follow the merchants’ routes to fabulous oases, desert palaces, synagogues, mosques and burial mounds”. It conjures up a visit to The Gaiety Theatre in Dublin to see Aladdin when I was a child.
The exhibition focuses on the second half of the first Millenium AD – I prefer AD to CE. It is a period not much studied in history lessons, written off as The Dark Ages, lit only by a few guttering candles as monks painstakingly created illuminated manuscripts in chilly cells in inhospitable locations around the British Isles. The reality is there were vibrant trade routes extending from Japan and China to Britain and Scandinavia and deep into Africa. The flow of goods, as it is today, was from east to west, skirting the Taklamakan.
The BM has collected some beautiful and finely wrought artefacts in this huge show. To see everything you need time and to have fewer other visitors. The critics no doubt are afforded this luxury; I was not so lucky. I will give the last word to my dyspeptic correspondent in the souk: “too crowded, too dark and the exhibits underwhelming. The National museums in Bishkek and Dushanbe had more to offer.” I will save you reaching for your old Atlas; they are the capitals of Kyrgistan and Tajikistan.
We walked to Mon Plaisir in Monmouth Street for lunch.