The Reviews Editor has a key part to play in the success of the Antiquaries Journal, garnering reviews of newly published titles while ensuring a good balance of period and discipline. Over the last 18 months or so, the Antiquaries Journal has been excellently well-served by not one but two reviews editors: Tom Beaumont James FSA and, more recently, Amanda Richardson FSA. More than a year ago, when a serious illness forced Tom to take time out, Amanda stepped up to help in his absence and has been invaluable ever since, expanding upon Tom’s system and encouraging new reviewers to come forward. During this difficult time, Tom has nevertheless offered his advice and support. However, earlier this year, Tom decided, despite progress with his recovery, that he would not return as Reviews Editor, and Mandy, too, with regret, has had to give up the role due to pressures of time. The Publications Manager and Editor of the Journal, Lavinia Porter, has keenly felt their loss, but hopes you'll join her (and the Society) in thanking both Tom and Amanda for their help with vol. 97. We wish them all the best for 2018 and beyond.

With the departure of Tom and Amanda before the summer, there has been an urgent need to find the right person to deal with reviews for future volumes, in particular, for vol. 98. We are therefore delighted to announce the appointment of Adrian James FSA as the new Reviews Editor. You will know Adrian well as the former Assistant Librarian in the Society’s Library here at Burlington House. Since leaving the post in 2016, Adrian has been elected a Fellow of the Society and has been volunteering with the Society. We hope you will join us in welcoming Adrian in his new role, which he will begin this November.

Fellows who have a book that is about to publish and would like it to be considered for review in the Antiquaries Journal should ask their publisher to contact Adrian by email at reviewseditor@sal.org.uk.

The forthcoming volume (97) of the Antiquaries Journal will publish later this month (November 2017). If you cannot wait until then, you can access the latest papers now in FirstView via the Fellows’ Area of the Society’s website.

The latest paper to be published online examines the medieval shrine of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey. The original abbey church was founded by the Confessor in the 11th century, but was rebuilt by Henry III in the new Gothic style of architecture in the 13th century. Henry III had a special devotion to the Confessor, and had the shrine constructed to form a suitable resting place for the royal saint’s remains. Its consecration took place in 1269, but the now-lost inscription on the shrine was said to read ‘1279’, therefore the actual date of the shrine’s construction has been the subject of debate for many years.

Now, Warwick Rodwell FSA and Matthew Payne FSA have re-evaluated the evidence and present a compelling new argument that the manuscript evidence for a later date is based on an identifiable scribal error. Their painstaking research has located the source of this error, and they suggest an alternative original reading of the inscription on the shrine’s pedestal. To read 'Edward the Confessor’s Shrine at Westminster Abbey: Its Date of Construction Reconsidered', visit the 'Library Resources' page in the Fellows' Area of our website and follow the link for the Antiquaries Journal to access FirstView articles.

Roger Lockyer FSA, Tudor and Stuart historian and gay rights pioneer, died in October. An appreciation appears in Fellows Remembered below.

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Nick Merriman FSA, Director of Manchester Museum, has been appointed Chief Executive of the Horniman Museum and Gardens in south London. He will take up the position in May, succeeding Janet Vitmayer. ‘Respected throughout the museum and heritage world, particularly around issues of diversity and sustainability,’ said the Horniman in a release, ‘Merriman has overseen a major programme of public engagement at the Manchester Museum and the transformation of its galleries, resulting in the doubling of visitor numbers during his tenure since 2006. He joins the Horniman as it prepares to open an exciting new World Gallery in June 2018, showcasing over 3,000 extraordinary objects from its internationally important anthropology collection, and a new Studio space later in the year.’

Fellows visiting Burlington House recently may have noticed a ruin-like structure outside in the Annenberg Courtyard. It is a statue plinth in the making. The Royal Academy of Arts, in collaboration with Watts Gallery Trust, is to reveal a new bronze cast of Physical Energy, a famed equestrian sculpture by George Frederic Watts (1817–1904), first displayed in the courtyard in 1904. The Trust commissioned a fourth cast of the horse and rider to mark the bicentenary of G F Watts’ birth. Made at the foundry of Pangolin Editions, it will be in London from 20 November–30 March 2018, and will be installed permanently at Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village in Compton, Surrey. A local consultation over a proposal to site it on a hillside beside the A3 closes on 26 November.

Following disputes about works of art caught in limbo by buyers seeking to avoid controls designed to keep the works in the UK, the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest is itself to be reviewed. In his Biteback column in the Sunday Times, Richard Brooks reports (5 November) that the Government has asked for ‘an internal examination’ of the Committee, to be led by Nigel Carrington, Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Arts London. No less than five of the eight Committee members are Fellows: Peter Barber FSA, Philippa Glanville FSA, Lowell Libson FSA, Christopher Rowell FSA and Leslie Webster FSA.
 
Iain Gordon Brown FSA has peer-reviewed, and contributed a substantial Introduction to, Robert Adam and Diocletian's Palace at Split, edited by Ana Šverko and Joško Belamarić and published by Škloska knjiga and the Institute of Art History in Zagreb. Adam, Brown tells Salon, ‘made his celebrated expedition to Spalato, Dalmatia (modern Split, Croatia), in 1757, and in 1764 published his superb folio on the ruins of the palace of the Emperor Diocletian. The title-page of his Ruins … at Spalatro [sic] in Dalmatia proudly proclaims Adam as FSA. His great book can best be described as part archaeological report, part architectural pattern-book and part very grand advertising brochure for an up-and-coming architectural practice. The making of the book, one of the most outstanding essays in architectural antiquarianism of the 18th century, is extraordinarily well documented in contemporary sources. Already the subject of detailed study, Adam and his work on the late-Roman palace has now been examined with a greater degree of attention than ever before.’ The book, the fruit of a conference held in Split in 2014, contains essays written by 18 international contributors, and many illustrations.
 
In February 2016 Christina Riggs FSA gave a Society lunchtime lecture about photography at the excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb. ‘I could talk for hours about this’, she said at the time, and now her research is nearly done she has worked on an exhibition for the Collection, Lincoln, called Photographing Tutankhamun. It opened last week on the 95th anniversary of the discovery of the tomb in November 1922, and will be there until 28 January, before moving to the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge in the summer; her academic monograph is due out in 2018. Riggs, she says, is the first person to study the entire photographic archive, and consider it from the viewpoint of photographic history. ‘Harry Burton’s photography did much more than simply record information about the tomb and its treasures,’ she says. ‘By looking at the different kinds of photographs Burton made, and how they were used, this exhibition places the Tutankhamun discovery in its historical context and asks whether photographs influence the way we think about both ancient and modern Egypt.’
 
Fellows feature in the shortlist for the William MB Berger Prize for British Art History 2017. The £5000 prize, administered by the British Art Journal in association with the Berger Collection Educational Trust of Denver, Colorado, is awarded for a book or exhibition catalogue that has made an outstanding contribution to the history of British art. Among the six books is English Medieval Embroidery: Opus Anglicanum (Yale University Press with the Victoria & Albert Museum), edited by Clare Browne FSA, Glyn Davies FSA and Michael FSA, with the assistance of Michaela Zöschg. Opus Anglicanum, quotes the citation, ‘Stands alone as an outstanding collection of expert contributions to accompany one of the great exhibitions of all time, providing a permanent recreation of the show.’ Also listed is Kenneth Clark: Life, Art & Civilisation (William Collins), by James Stourton FSA. This is ‘A delight; a book that brings out the different sides of Clark’s complex character through the most thorough research and perceptive writing.’ Technology in the Country House (Historic England), by Marilyn Palmer FSA and Ian West, and Inquisitive Eyes: Slade Painters in Edwardian Essex (Sansom & Company), by Gwen Yarker FSA, made the longlist. This year’s panel of assessors includes Robin Simon FSA, Editor, the BJA, and Andrew Wilton FSA, art historian. The award ceremony will be held at the Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, on 30 November.
 
David Mitchell FSA has written Silversmiths in Elizabethan and Stuart London: Their Lives and Their Marks. The book, says the blurb, is one of the most important works of silver scholarship in recent years. Starting from the first surviving makers' mark plate in the archives of the London Assay Office, Mitchell identifies some of these previously unknown craftsmen and pieces together the narratives of their lives and trade in the Elizabethan and Stuart periods. The first part of the book tells the story of the silversmiths' trade in the Elizabethan and Stuart periods, including the many influences on smiths and the wider trade, from the impact of French design and 'Stranger' silversmiths through to Plague, Fire and Civil War. The second part contains attributions for 540 separate marks and some 400 individual biographies. With over 200 images, this work combines social, economic and art history. 
  
On 30 October David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, gave a House of Lords committee a list of 58 sectors covered by separate studies, said to have been commissioned by the Government, on the economic impact of Brexit on the UK economy. The list was given to the press. Reports of immediate interest to Fellows included Higher Education (28), Museums, Galleries and Libraries (38) and Publishing (46). Davis said the studies would not be released, despite demands, because ‘this information could be detrimental to the Government’s [Brexit] negotiating position’. A motion to release them, tabled as a ‘humble address’, was soon passed unanimously in the House of Commons. This obscure device apparently allows the government no option but to publish the studies. That has not yet happened.
 
On the day when the Queen went to the British Museum and Mike Bloomberg opened his Mithraeum in London (above), the Presidents of France and the United Arab Emirates launched Louvre Abu Dhabi. Anna Somers Cocks FSA (she tweeted this photo of herself with the museum’s architect, Jean Nouvel) talked from the museum to Front Row on BBC Radio 4 on 7 November. In the ten years during which the museum came together, she says, when questioned about UAE’s politics, the country has embraced art: it’s not a democracy, but it is a tribal system that works; it’s not for us to suggest it should change. ‘Emirati curators have been trained,’ she writes in the Art Newspaper, ‘and Hissa Al Dhaheri, the female Deputy Director, has devised an educational programme that reaches as far as the remoter eastern emirates. The national curriculum has been modified to embrace art, creative studies and the museum.’ In the Times (11 November), Rachel Campbell-Johnston concluded that ‘the outcome of this new project, with its fundamentally humanistic message, could prove of profound benefit to all’.

In his Times column of 4 November, Normand Hammond FSA reported that six different species of starfish, four of sand dollars and two kinds of sea urchin have been identified in archaeological excavations at the Aztec Great Temple at Tenochtitlan, 250 km from the coast and 2250 m above sea-level. The echinoderms, 14 species in all, had been deposited in stone offering boxes with other materials between the 14th and early 16th centuries AD. Creatures from both the Pacific and Caribbean coasts were buried at Tenochtitlan; it is thought many were brought alive to the temple by runners. Favoured fish had striking characteristics, such as strong bodies, sharp teeth, strong spines, bright colours or a toxic nature. Leonardo López Luján Hon FSA, director of the Temple Mayor excavations, said the unusual selection of animals ‘is symptomatic of the biological diversity of [Aztec] ritual offerings’.

Caroline Barron FSA writes with news of the latest in a series of historical atlases, which she calls ‘a triple triumph for Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries’. The first three volumes of the British Historic Towns Atlas project (1969–1989) are out of print, but are available free of charge online. The Historic Towns Trust’s series ‘sprang into life again in 2015’, says Barron, ‘with the publication of the new-style portfolio atlas of Windsor and Eton written by David Lewis FSA. This was followed by the City of York, edited by Peter Addyman FSA (which has had to be reprinted), and November will see the publication of Winchester, edited by Martin Biddle FSA and Derek Keene. These atlases provide a principal map showing the towns’ historic features on a digitised 19th-century topographic base-map, and other maps show the towns at different stages of their development. All atlases have a detailed gazetteer of streets, buildings and other topographical features, and a general introduction describing the towns' topographical and historical development. There are numerous illustrations and a CD is included to enable maps to be used in talks and presentations.’
 
Bruce Boucher FSA, Director of the Sir John Soane’s Museum, is among the contemporary art world’s ‘alternative 100 most influential people’, in a list compiled by ArtLyst. ‘2017 has been an extraordinary year for exhibitions both here in the UK and abroad,’ says Artlyst. ‘London is currently … basking in a golden age of curation.’

Roger Lockyer FSA died on 28 October, a month before his 90th birthday. He was elected a Fellow of the Society in May 1981.
 
Lockyer read history at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, where he was a scholar, after National Service in the Royal Navy. He became Reader in History at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland. His Tudor and Stuart Britain 1471–1714 (1964), subsequently revised as Tudor and Stuart Britain 1485–1714, remains a standard text; a fourth edition is due (updated with Peter Gaunt).
 
Other books include Hapsburg and Bourbon Europe 1470–1720 (1974), Henry VII (1987), The Early Stuarts: A Political History of England 1603–1642 (1989) and James VI and I (1998); he co-edited Shakespeare's World (1997, with Gerald M Pinciss). In his obituary for the Independent, Marcus Williamson notes an academic benefit of the openness that eventually followed the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967: gay figures from history, he claims, ‘could be discussed with less fear of rebuke’. Thus Lockyer was able to reveal in The Life and Political Career of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham 1592­–1628 (1981) ‘that its subject had an intimate relationship with King James I’.
 
A distinguished historian of the Tudor and Stuart periods, Lockyer is nonetheless better known among many for his social life. He made news in 2005 when he told journalists of his impending civil partnership with Percy Steven, which was to begin on the day the new arrangement became officially sanctioned. The couple were much interviewed again in 2014, when same-sex couples were able to convert civil partnership to marriage. Their relationship began, they said, when ‘homosexuality’ was illegal; at one point Lockyer had had an affair with Jeremy Wolfenden, the son of Lord Wolfenden whose Committee prepared the report that led to decriminalisation.
 
In press depictions Lockyer seems to be in a state of permanent joy, though in a perhaps telling acknowledgement in his life of Buckingham, he thanks Percy Steven for his ‘readiness to shoulder additional burdens at moments of great stress’. He was interviewed for the BBC shortly before he died by Alice Hutton, who calls him ‘a historian who walked into the pages of history’. Paul Twocock, from the gay rights charity Stonewall, told Hutton that Lockyer ‘was a real pioneer. He showed that you can triumph over tremendous odds, through prejudice and discrimination, and really become recognised for the person you are, to love the person you love, and that be accepted by everybody around him. That’s why he was such an inspiration.’
 
You can read Hutton’s article online, and listen to her report for Saturday PM (4 November, 24 minutes 30 seconds in). The photo above (BBC) shows Lockyer (right) with Percy Steven at Pride in London 2017; top, Against the Law/BBC Studios.
 

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