Successes

Henry VIII: Man and Monarch

Generously sponsored by PACCAR, Inc and co-curated by David Starkey, Henry VIII: Man and Monarch marked the 500th anniversary of the accession to the throne of England’s most famous king.

The exhibition featured many of the treasures of the British Library’s unrivalled Henry VIII collections, including his personal letters, key official documents, and maps and books from his personal library.

One of the star items of the exhibition, which attracted significant media interest, was a love letter from Henry to Anne Boleyn, on loan from the Vatican Library and returned to England for the first time in almost 500 years.

Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art

Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art was the most popular British Library exhibition ever attracting just under 227,000 visitors and almost as many to the exhibition website.

Thanks to the generosity of Apax Partners and Bouygues UK Ltd, visitors were able to enjoy this outstandingly visual exploration of the themes behind many of the world’s great maps.

A map from Sir John Narbrough's naval journals, dated 1670

Curated by the Library’s maps experts, Peter Barber and Tom Harper, the exhibition highlighted the beauty of wall maps, including an 1804 copy of the Fra Mauro World Map, the Psalter World Map dating from 1265 and Stephen Walter’s 2008 satirical map of London.

Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art generated a huge amount of media interest, and the collections featured extensively in the BBC’s Maps season, The Beauty of Maps and Maps: Power, Plunder & Possession.