History in the making

The grandchildren have both already learned about the founder of modern nursing as part of the National Curriculum so we knew it would be of interest to them as well, particularly as the museum is just over the road from one of their favourite London play parks, in the former gardens behind Lambeth Palace.

The big thing I came away with (besides the fact that it's not only 21st century
WAGS who name children after the place where they're conceived) is the sure and certain knowledge that Nightingale's 'Lady with the Lamp' stature was very much what we'd now label a media scam or stunt. At least the soapy new BBC drama is telling something like the real story.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not denigrating the woman's importance or achievements. It's simply that what's come down in popular culture is not the real story. It's what people wanted to believe, and what was easy to 'sell' to the public. She was a celeb before the concept was invented.

Her greatest achievement only came to be acknowledged years later by people in the know when the final portable building design she was behind (we'd now call it a field hospital, as popularised in M*A*S*H) was widely used in a way it never was in the Crimea. She was not a good nurse, but was a great campaigner who really got things done.

She set up the first school for nurses at St Thomas's - hence the museum's location.

The lamp business came about because she and her nurses couldn't keep the usual candles alight in the dismal wards of Scutari, so they adopted local Turkish lanterns, a collapsible linen shade that sheltered their guttering candles from the draughts - and our girls got to carry one.

There are loads of fascinating and original documents on show, but the displays are very text-heavy and it's a strangely old-fashioned experience for a comparatively modern venue, made all the more obvious because the following day we visited one of the best and most family-friendly museums we've ever been to - full of ancient Victorian collections but updated and integrated into new, modern buildings and made relevant by being unapologetically hands-on.

The Horniman Museum was set up originally by a man who made a fortune out of tea who had an obsession with insects. Frederick John Horniman collected extensively and was at the sharp end of the scientific thinking of his day - he was a friend and correspondent of Darwin, for instance.

What is brilliant about the Horniman today, besides its superb location in extensive grounds on the borders of Dulwich and Lewisham in south London, is the way collections that illustrate the bygone obsession with gathering together and immaculately displaying every possible variation on, say, one English butterfly species, is integrated into a modern eco-conscious way of looking at and responding to the whole world.

Fabulous aquarium, a brilliant hands-on section and the best collection of musical instruments I've ever seen, including a soundproof room for children and their adults to have a go at things. The entire Boosey & Hawkes brass collection is now housed at the Horniman.

The kids and their mother enjoyed a workshop session led by experts on the ancient art of henna body decoration and then it was off to try out some of the museum's huge collection of puppets from around the world (picturerd), including our Punch and his put-upon wife.

Fabulous - and all free (unlike the Nightingale). Great inexpensive food from the café as well and to get down to the south of London from right outside our hotel to the door of the Horniman cost a grand total of £3.50 there and back - I have a bus pass and the kids go free. Perhaps there's a lesson for our region right there.

I thought it was interesting to contemplate how a Victorian worthy like Horniman (I just remember his firm's tea in yellow packets along with Lipton's) spent his money on his fellow Londoners while a modern entrepreneur like Andrew Lloyd Webber uses his money to buy Pre-Raphaelite paintings and his power to get publicity for his ongoing theatrical activities.

For, naturally enough, back at our hotel, fortified by Mexican cocktails, I joined the kids in watching the two big events on the box, I'd Do Anything - literally true, I imagine - and Britain's Got Talent (Dr Who was being recorded back home rather against my better instincts, but more of that some other time).

I've never seen the Simon Cowell show before this, the final, and was, frankly, astounded by it. How has Piers Morgan become a judge of anything? Cowell (that's a Horniman mask, not him) plays the same tired old tune that Tony Blackburn first developed years ago.

Our kids were rooting for the feelgood Asian dance duo, and we were all laughing at the obviousness of the youthful singers and their hackneyed Chazza Church material. Clearly the only performers with real talent were the girl string quartet glitzing themselves up a la Vanessa Mae. Bet Cowell signs them up, by the way.

But the Great British Public - the same sort of people, I bet, who believed in The Lady with the Lamp - voted in their millions for a terribly average break dancer who, for the third time, apparently, did a terrible Singin' in the Rain pastiche complete with onstage shower. No way should he have won. The panel knew that too

But, as my daughter (who'd read or dozed throughout the entire proceedings) pointed out, most of the audience who voted (it was on ITV, of course) would have been the same people who went out that morning to buy The Sun.

You, she said, are just a middle class, intellectual snob, who takes these things far too seriously. She is, of course, absolutely right. But so am I.

www.florence-nightingale.co.uk
www.horniman.ac.uk