 Good evening, good afternoon or good morning, dependent on where you are and a very warm welcome to this online event from the British Library. Alexander the Great, the making of an exhibition. My name is Scott McKendrick and I have the privilege of not only being head of Western Heritage Collections here at the British Library, but also introducing this very special event that I'm sure you will find really fascinating. This is a unique chance to hear not just about a wonderful exhibition, currently showing at the British Library until the 19th of February, but also about how it came about, the real inside story and directly from those who have brought it into being. There are other events linked to this exhibition and if you find this one fascinating then do check out the British Library website for other events coming up over the next three weeks. For now, let me introduce the four curators who are here with us today. There's Adrian Edwards, who's head of Printed Heritage Collections, Ursula Sims-Williams, Lead Curator Persian Collections, Peter Toth, Curator Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts, and finally, Iria Thors-Dottier, who's Digital Content Exhibition Curator. After they've spoken in turn and Adrian has summed up, they will have time to answer questions. If you'd like to ask a question, please post it in the form below the video window, and I will aim to get through as many of these as possible. But without further ado, it's over to Peter, to Peter Toth, to get us started. Peter. Thank you very much, Scott, and good evening everyone who decided to join us for this special insight into the background and behind the scenes of this exhibition, Alexander the Great, Making of a Myth. The topics we would like to touch upon in the forthcoming presentation is a short survey about how the idea came about to do an exhibition about Alexander, and how we developed it into an actual exhibition. Some remarks and comments about the delights and the difficulties of the process of putting the exhibition together will follow next. And after that, there will be a short survey about digital aspects of the exhibition given by the right person to do this, the digital curator of the show, and then a short sum up about how it's going right now with the exhibition. So in the next slide, I would like to give you an idea about how the idea of an exhibition about Alexander came up, and the roots of the show go back to quite early on in 1996, when the British Library had an exhibition called The Mythical Quest, which featured 10 quest tales from all around the world, including optics from the Middle East and classical Greece, and one of the sections of that exhibition included stories around Alexander the Great. And having that section, that chapter of the exhibition, convinced the curators of the show that the British Library has wonderful and rich material, which would qualify for a show about Alexander only. And then the idea of having an exhibition devoted exclusively to legends, medieval and ancient and early modern legends of Alexander was raised at that time and has been floating around in the library for more than 20 years when it was given as a task in 2017 and 2018 to us to flash it out as an exhibition. In the next slide, we will see how we were sure that this new exhibition cannot be about the historical Alexander whose main dates and features are in this slide. We did know that it cannot be about the battles, the conquests of Alexander the Great, but it should be something else which is on the next slide. We were sure that it cannot be a historical exhibition because it has been done in many ways and at many places already. And these exhibitions were always trying to find the historical Alexander in the extremely complicated forest of legends that surround his figure, trying to find the truth, the historical man behind the legends. Instead of doing that, we decided for something else and for the first time ever, we decided to focus on the legends themselves on the next slide. We were sure that this exhibition for the first time ever will expose and highlight the incredibly amazing transformations of legends around Alexander who was flying in the air with griffins. And it will be an exhibition about these legends in a comparative way where various cultures and traditions which adopted these legends will be contrasted with each other. The first steps how we approach this is on the next slide. We decided that it is to start with the extremely rich literature about the legends of Alexander the Great. So it was the secondary literature which we first started to consult and then various image libraries which contained and cataloged images derived from these legends. That was the next step. So we collected a lot of material about the legends and images and visual representations of the legends and Alexander them himself. And then having this incredibly rich material, we tried to translate it to the holdings of the British Library into our collections and see what exactly we have in the library's very rich and diverse collections. And then the next slide will give you an idea what we found after this. This was an extremely rich treasure trove of various things about Alexander from all across cultures and time. Comic books from the 20th century, Greek manuscripts from the ancient times, Japanese manga and anime series, music and so much more which was extremely surprising for us. But then we needed a thread how to organize this extremely rich material and the thread was found as it is the displayed on the next slide. The thread instead of having any other concept to arrange the material was the simplest one ever, the life of Alexander. We would be following the legendary life of Alexander as recorded in the medieval sources and exhibit various scenes of his life in a comparative perspective. For example, as it's illustrated on this side, the conception of Alexander from a French print and another French manuscript, an Indian film and the Persian manuscript. This is how we started to develop the concept. The next slide will give you an idea how complicated the process was. It was very clear from the earliest times on that this will be an exhibition where heritage items, if you go to the images with this slide, heritage items will be displayed next to modern things. Just like here you can see Alexander's education with Aristotle taken from various things from an Arabic manuscript and from a modern film of Oliver Stone. This was one feature. The other was that many of the items are in bound books and manuscripts. There is only one thing we can show of a rich manuscript. Only one opening can be selected and all the other delights and beautiful things in that manuscript will have to be hidden. So we had to be very careful what opening this select from a manuscript. And another very interesting challenge was that we were sure that the narrative will be twofold for this exhibition. We will be telling the story of Alexander's life. In this case, his education with Aristotle. But on another level, we'll have to tell the stories of the items themselves. We have to say what this Arabic manuscript represents and how important it is for the Arabic book illustration. We have to say something about the film, which was so controversial in its time. And we have to say something about the last items featured here, which is a 15th century manuscript, which was an actual copy dedicated to the Queen of England, which gives an actual and an additional message and an additional meaning to the story of Alexander represented in this manuscript. This twofold narrative, which you will see all along the exhibition was quite a complicated challenge to face, which is why in the next slide you will see how we face that, how we decided to face that. We have an excellent curatorial theme set up exactly at this point. We have Adrian Edwards, who is the head of printed heritage collections, an expert of modern books and modern books as well. And he advised us a lot about printed novels and modern things. We have Arshula Sims-Williams, the lead creator of Persian collections working with us, who made an enormous contribution to the show by securing Oriental Middle Eastern material to the show. We had Eiria, her daughter with us, who looked after the very rich digital legacy of Alexander and made sure that this is rightly displayed in the show. And we had a PhD student working with us who had us at various bits and faces of the exhibition. But to secure that everything is accurate on the next slide, you will see how we safeguarded the messages, the messaging of the exhibition. We set up an advisory board, had it by our Scott McKenvic, who is kindly chairing this evening with us. And Richard Stoneman was the main advisor in the group and another series of experts, they all helped us to secure that what we say is rigid academically and trustworthy. This is how we started off the work about which my colleague Adrian Edwards will give you an idea of the Adrian. Thank you, Peter. So if you look at the next slide. And so to the lengthy task, really, of finding potential objects for display, building around the thread of the storytelling that we settled on. So the British Library has a lot of stuff, around 170 million physical items. How do you find Alexander-related books and manuscripts amongst all that? Well, between us, we have about 80 years experience working with the collection. That's four of us. So we had some pretty good ideas where to start looking. And we did indeed spend a lot of time browsing the shelves in historical storage areas, where many of the materials are arranged by format and language or subjects. You can see in the picture here, this is the horizontal storage, as it's called, where we've got very large books of engravings, this being the Atarine Mosk in Alexandria. But for the most part, it was about working through lists of potential items found by searching our own catalogs. If you put Alexander the Great into our catalogue, you'll get a lot of hits. Trauling through specialist bibliographies and, yes, throwing Alexander-related search terms at full text databases and picture libraries. But the main task was to read vast numbers of books and journal articles, making sure we followed up on the footnotes, read the introductions, got a sense of exactly what the writers had seen and what they'd not found. We did look at what other exhibitions have shown, but they were overwhelmingly interested in finding the historical Alexander, rather than the latest stories, so they were only of limited help. The really important thing, though, was talking to experts. Peter mentions the advisory board, but there were many other people, including academics, curators at other institutions, collectors of Alexander, Alexander memorabilia, and indeed creators. Next slide, please. It's a relatively easy task to find books and manuscripts that reference Alexander, but what we needed was to find an engaging mix that fitted certain criteria. There were content considerations. We were looking for stories throughout Alexander's life, even though there seemed to be more that relate to particular periods, such as his campaigns in Asia and his mythical quest. We wanted to show stories that ranged from the possibly true, such as his magnificent funeral hearse, through to the pure fiction, like his flight through the air. We also wanted examples from all around the world and from different periods in time. So these considerations may have also applied if we were thinking of illustrating an academic book, but as this is an exhibition, we also had to think about physical considerations. So most items have to be visually interesting. A gallery that comprises just pages of black and white text is not very appealing for paying visitors and the objects need to require little or no conservation work before they can be displayed. There is no point in us choosing lots of items that need extensive paper repair. We neither have the money nor the time to undertake this. We wanted a mix of formats, shapes and sizes to create variety and change of pace, hence, for example, the suit of armour, which you may have seen. But then again, we didn't want too many very large items. Most really do have to fit comfortably into the standard exhibition display cases. There is a budget for building bespoke cases, but it's limited. And there are other constraints too. The book or manuscript needs to be available for the period of the exhibition. So not needed for teaching or for a digitisation project or for display elsewhere. And as Peter has already mentioned, you can only show one opening from a book or a manuscript. Many of the items we chose were absolutely full of fantastic illustrations and could have been used to illustrate multiple stories. We had to choose one and there was a lot of debate around that, the exact way in which we used each object. On the next slide, please. There are practical considerations that come from the gallery. So the size of the gallery is all important in determining the number of stories that can be covered and indeed how many objects can be displayed. So our Pack R1 gallery has a floor space of 420 square meters. That's room for about 30 to 45 cases and a total of around, let's say 120 described objects. In our exhibition, where we were thinking of showing each story illustrated by several items, two, three or four objects to show the same story, but from different cultures and times. If you work out the the arithmetic around that, that leaves us to about 40 stories that we could cover. With so much available material focused on the stories around Alexander's campaigns in Asia, this is where we had to be most ruthless and choose just a few. We decided, for example, not to talk about Alexander and the Guardian Knot, nor his siege of the city of Tyre. It'd be interesting to hear what you think about that. There are also stories we wanted to show, but fail to find suitable objects for, at least suitable objects for an exhibition environment. The Alexander tradition in West Africa is an example of this. Alexander is cited as a role model for Sunjata Keita, the 13th century founder of the Empire of Mali. But these are oral histories and despite initial excitement at finding a Sunjata graphic novel, it turned out not to mention Alexander at all. So we had discussions with colleagues at the School of Oriental and African Studies, but in the end, we had to give up on including this aspect in the exhibition. On the next slide, we talk about loans, inward loans. So it's the usual practice and expectation of major exhibitions of this kind that we borrow a few key items. The purpose of this is to fill gaps in the storyline, add variety of pace by adding types of object that we generally don't hold in our own institution, such as statues, and to show important treasures that might otherwise be missing from the story. Loans can also be helpful in attracting media attention. Usually, the process of borrowing material is a long and involved one. We would go and look at the potential objects in reading rooms, galleries, or perhaps behind the scenes, before entering into discussions with their curators, librarians, or owners, generally incorporating further visits. This couldn't happen during the preparations for Alexander because we were working during the periods of COVID lockdown. So most of the loans were arranged by email and video call. And sometimes we were surprised, nicely surprised, I should say, when we finally got to see the objects for real when they were brought here for installation. Several of our approaches to other organisations for loans, however, came to nothing. I think the lack of a personal relationship with the lender due to the COVID travel restrictions was behind most of these failures. But loans are, of course, expensive, even though all costs are covered by the borrower, by us in this case, including any insurance, conservation, work, transportation, courier expenses. Still, the overall resource commitment does put some lenders off. And at our end, I really must point to the efforts of our loans registry, who made all this happen for us, and they spend a lot of time on contracts and getting things measured and so forth. In fact, in Alexander, we ended up with what I thought was a fairly large number of loans, 36 objects coming from 20 lenders, some of the major institutions and smaller ones and a few private individuals. Unfortunately, the travel restrictions around COVID meant that they all ended up coming from Britain and Ireland, with the exception of two objects from Venice, from the Hellenic Institute for Byzantine and post-Bizantine studies, for which we were really fortunate in receiving a lot of assistance from the Greek ambassador in London. The next slide shows what we ended up with. So this is the structure and the layout. If you visited the exhibition already, you'll be familiar with it. It shows the stories as they relate to the stages of Alexander's life. So after an introductory area, we look at stories relating to Alexander's parentage in early years, then his career as a military leader, his relationships, his fantastic adventures with mythical beasts and flying machines and talking trees. And finally, the stories around his return to Babylon with his mysterious death and the even greater mystery around what happened to his body and the spectacular tomb at Alexandra, in which the histories tell us it had been placed. The arrangement aims to make best use of the gallery space, while allowing room for visitors to enjoy the objects, sit down in a few places and be surprised by what's through a doorway or especially at the end by the unexpectedness of what's around the corner. The design created for us by Drinkel Dean, working with Lombard Studios, uses a lot of colours, fabrics and projections, the aim being to help get across that this is not a show about archaeology, but about storytelling and about going on a journey. The colours in fact are meant subconsciously perhaps to suggest Dawn to dusk, mirroring Alexander's own life from birth to death. And on that note, I'll hand over to Ursula. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, now comes the difficult part, the process of selection. And we had room, as Adrienne mentioned, potentially for a and we each had our own specialisms, bringing different sets of material to the drawing board. But an added complication was Covid, as we've mentioned. The library was closed for much of the time, and we were working remotely without any access to the collections. So what did we do? Well, we met regularly on Teams, and we use Google Slides, and we shared the files for each of the six sections. And as an example, I'm showing you a screenshot of section three, Building an Empire. This was by far the largest section, and initially it included 87 items, which you can see some of in the left hand column. We used the slide for an image of the item itself, and we also used the note area underneath for additional information on provenance and context image source and so on. We found this very useful later. The final selection for this section, in fact, consisted of 40 items, so we whittled it down a fair bit. And in this next slide, I'll show you the subsection, which is of that section, Building an Empire, India and beyond. And what we see here is how we were able to group the items together in experimental ways, and this actually is the final. These all got into the final show. But we see on the left the battle of Porus and Alexander in a mogul 17th century realisation, and then somewhat different from a 15th century European perspective next to it, coupled with an archaeological coin of the made to commemorate Alexander's victory. And on the right, we were able to bring in the autographed manuscript of Handel's opera, Alessandro, and also in the exhibition, we have an audio point where you can listen to recording of it. And then underneath, Alexander Iskander, engagement with Indian philosophy. So on the left side, a Persian manuscript showing him meeting the Brahmins. And on the right, the same story, Alexander and Dindimas, he's called, in a 17th century British publication. So now on the next slide, I'm showing you the actual object list. Well, because of COVID, we weren't really able to come up with a draft object list until towards the end of 2021. We would, I think we would have hoped to have come up with it much sooner in normal circumstances. But here you see the final version with columns for image, title, author, date, media, registration number, and so on. And when we break down that final choice, we've actually got 144 objects about, more than the initial 120, but some are quite small. We've got objects from 25 countries in 23 languages. And the British Library collections represent about 86 by counted, 86 items in the exhibition. And we've got 35 loans, or 36 loans, I think it is in fact, from 19 different lenders. In terms of the breakdown between manuscript and printed material, we've got some 67 manuscripts and 38 printed items, which is a good balance. And also, between Western and non-Western material, again, there's a very nice balance between the two. So we felt that the final choice reinforced the idea of a narrative shared through centuries and across cultures, which is really what we wanted to try and get across. So in the next slide, having selected the items, this next slide shows how we had to tackle the accompanying documentation, making the panels and writing the labels. So space again was an issue. For the panels, we were charged with writing only 80 to 100 words, and the labels should ideally only be 70 words. And here you see a model label. And as mentioned before, every layer, every label, every object could be interpreted in several different ways. The labels ideally would reflect the exhibition narrative, of course, but the object itself, and if it was a textual object, it needed to give the context of the story, of the mess that it contained. It also needed to give a conveyor sense of the reception of the object, how it was viewed at the time it was written, and if possible, the provenance, where the object came from. So this was a problem, and we tried to do our best. It was very difficult. Sometimes we had to emphasize some aspects as opposed to other aspects. But in the next slide, fortunately, we were able to write a book, the book of the exhibition, and we could go into a lot more detail here. And it was quite challenging to have the task of writing catalogue and the deadlines that we were up against. But on the other hand, it was incredibly useful because it really helped us to put all the objects into perspective in a way which we would have found very difficult otherwise. The catalogue was edited by Richard Stoneman of Exeter University, one of the world's leading authorities on the Alexander romance, and he also acted as our main external advisor. And in addition to the nine illustrated essays, every object in the exhibition, except for one, and a few others, is described in between two to three hundred words generally. So that's a great improvement on the 70 of the labels. And we also were able to write extended contextual passages joining them up. And now I'm going to hand over to Iria to talk about the digital aspect. And my colleagues have talked about some of the challenges of what to put in the exhibition and where. So I got to come and do what I think of as all the fun stuff. So I was looking at some of the film clips, the TV, the music that we've included. And that did come with some challenges. There are some difficulties around rights when you're using clips in a public space. We had some challenges. We wanted to show a clip from the film Alexander the 2004 film directed by Oliver Stone. And it was a little challenging to clear that clip. And it comes with a hefty fee to get such permissions. So we had to look for alternatives sometimes. And in this case, we used the film script instead. But we have managed to throughout the exhibition. I think we've got one in every section, something film related or documentary related music. We've got something AV in every section. And the whole exhibition actually opens with a clip that we've made, which is made up from different pictures of Alexander, most of which are in the exhibition. They are all portraying Alexander from a different culture. And you can actually see that before you enter into the exhibition. It's the first thing you see is you go down the stairs into the Packard Gallery. And then we have also had a little bit of fun with the exhibition through this. So we have large, what we've called or what the design is called immersive thresholds in between each section. They're about six meters high. And there's a projection above each. And the projection is to give a sense of what is to come in the next exhibition. So we have a beautiful one of the bust of Alexander turning round. We've got some swords clashing before building an empire section. And we've been able to use these projections, not just in the gallery, but we're going to use them in other ways for other events at the library. So we're actually using the projections for a storytelling session with children, for example. And we've used one of the very popular legends about Alexander, the Talking Trees, where Alexander goes to visit the Talking Trees to ask his fate, to turn that into an interactive. So you can actually come and almost a little bit of playtime in the gallery. So it is family friendly. You walk in front of the trees and you move your arms to control the leaves and the tree of the sun and the tree of the moon interact with you and tell you a fortune. So it's a really engaging way to just get a little bit of movement in the gallery. And then we finished off the exhibition. I'm so sorry, spoiler alert, if you've not been into the exhibition space already, with a very pictured there, very impressive reconstruction, I think, of what Alexander's tomb might have looked like. So part of the idea of using these projections, which were kindly lent to us by Ubisoft, the creators of Assassin's Creed, is to show what Alexander's story is still doing today. So it still lives on in computer games in this case. So the researchers at Ubisoft have actually used other organizations, such as the library, to research what they think Alexander's tomb might have looked like and come up with really impressive graphics for their game. And those are what we have projected around our tomb. On the next slide, you will see that we've also created a website. So why would we bother making a website when we have a wonderful exhibition space? Partly audience reach. So we know that a lot of people can't make it to the library, which is a great shame for us, but we want to be able to offer something for those of you who are overseas or just can't make it during the time period that the exhibition's on. And that's very much what Alexander the Great website is for. It allows us to address some of the challenges that are in the gallery. So I think nearly all of my colleagues mentioned that it's really, really hard to choose which page we're going to have open from the book. The website lets us have as many pictures as we want. And we can add pictures throughout the course of the exhibition. So at the moment, if you were to look at the website, we do have mostly only one or two openings from each item that we featured on the website. We will be adding more at the end of the exhibition. It allows us to pull together all different content types. So we will be adding on our Faces of Alexander video that I mentioned at the beginning onto the website. But we also have lovely videos, one that features Adrian actually. We've got articles that have been expanded on the themes that are in the exhibition. We have different collection types. We have little animations. So there's a lot more there than we could include in the gallery. And the wonderful thing about websites is there's no word limit. We haven't just thrown every single word in the British Library at you on the website. We have kept to a nice limit. It is possible to read each of our articles in just a few minutes. But it does give us a chance to just tell you a little bit more than we could put into the gallery. And the other lovely thing about it is it's free to access. So anybody can get on there. You don't have to pay the entrance fee. It gives you a slight taster of what the exhibition is like. And it will hopefully either remind you of things that you've seen in the exhibition or encourage you to come and see it. And we all know in this day and age that it's everyone's a little bit strapped for cash. So this is our solution to that, just to give you a nice little taster. And when the exhibition closes, the website will still be there. So it provides a sort of legacy space for the exhibition. And the website, because it's attached to the British Library, will eventually be archived as part of the UK web archive. So it will now always be there. On the next slide, you'll see some of the things that we're doing with blogs and social media. So today it's almost an intrinsic part of an exhibition to get on social media. We use Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok now as well. I think we post a LinkedIn as well. And that just allows us to be a little bit more playful with some of the items that are in the exhibition. The image in the middle of this slide actually suggests our idea of how you might get to work during one of the TFL strikes inspired by Alexander in his flying Wendy House. It looks a little like in his little flying machine. It gives us a chance to catch up with some of the creators who are featured in the exhibition. So we interviewed Romina Yee, who is a graphic novelist who lives in Malaysia, but managed to come to see us in the exhibition. And we talked to her about what she finds important about Alexander and why she created a 21st century Alexander romance. And that you can find on our social media channels and also on our website. And we include blogs, which allows us to expand beyond everything that we've got in the exhibition. So we're talking about Alexander, but we can include some items that didn't make it into the exhibition, or we can go into more details about loans. So there's a lovely detailed blog, for example, about the suit of armor, pulling out lots of the pictures on the armor that we can't mention in the exhibition. On the next slide, you will see that we had some other challenges while it was in the exhibition. So this, for example, is the Ebstorf map. It's huge. So that's the first reason that I chose it for work with an organization called Escape Studios. They are a college that specializes in interactive and real-time education. So that means that I was able to get to work with 10 students from Escape to create a family-friendly interactive. And we ran it as a summer project. And I asked the students to create me a more accessible version of the Ebstorf map. The Ebstorf map has over 2000 points on it. It was the world's largest world map, sorry, the largest world map from the Middle Ages. It was created in around 1300, but it was unfortunately destroyed in 1943 by Allied bombing of Hamburg. And that made this map particularly interesting to work with gaming technology, because it's something that is now lost. And we were able to recreate an image of it from the facsimile that you can see on this slide and the facsimile that is printed at two meters by two meters and is on display in the gallery. And we could use that as a basis to create a really lovely interactive 3D version of the map. And in that map, you can swoop into the different sites in this map that relate to Alexander the Great. So I said there are 2000 points on the map. About 19 of those relate specifically to Alexander the Great and the Alexander romance. And we have used all of those in the game. So you can fly in and you'll get a little pop-up box. You can see some of these on the next slide. And you'll get a little bit of information about each object. And it provides audio as well. And it's really family friendly. The brief I gave to the students was I wanted it to be able to be used within schools. And it's free to download. So it's on our website. You can download it. We had some issues in that the Unreal Engine, which is what the students were specializing in, could only really easily run on Windows. So I think I'm afraid to say you'll have to use Windows if you want to use it. But we have, if you are a non-Windows user, there are videos on our website so that you can just see the experience. And the interactive map. The students chose to set the map itself that they've set on a table within their impression of what the nunnery in which the map was made might look like. So they did some research in our collections to try and find out what a medieval scriptorium might have looked like, which is the top image that you can see there. So the whole gaming experience starts with a swooping through the room to find a map on the table. And this was very much inspired by the fact that we have the Assassin's Creed material in the exhibition. And so I'll hand over now to Adrian. Thank you, Iria. So if we look at the next slide, I've put up some of the feedback and the figures associated with how the exhibition is going at the moment. So it's a bit busy, but I'll just draw out the main thing. So tickets, over 20,000 tickets sold. To that, there will be a considerable number of group visit tickets, schools visits, children going for stories. So we don't know what the overall target is. I haven't been able to get that figure. But we're aiming for something like 35,000 visitors in all. I think we're probably on target. We have had some excellent reviews, four or five stars, with the exception of the first review from The Guardian, which gave us two stars. Although next day we have a second review, which seemed to like it. So yeah, book sales, the 1818 represents about 50% of the hardbacks that were printed and about 30% of the paperbacks. Interestingly, most of the hardbacks, 82% of them in fact, have been sold through the general book trade, not via our own BL shop. So through local bookshops or through online, major international online booksellers. I'd say from the feedback on the left there, I just typed up some of the comments. People seem to like the exhibition. I'd say it's not nine out of 10. It's whatever it is, 98 out of 100. People like the exhibition, both academics and the public, in terms of what they've told us anyway. There have been a couple of negatives. It's really hard to find them. I've put two there at the bottom just to give you a flavor of the kinds of things that people have said back. As I said, the initial Guardian reviewer wasn't to press the basing of high quality medieval miniatures and Persian bookarts, alongside a selection of comics, paperbacks and other modern media. It makes some interesting points. I've seen that other galleries do like this combination and think that the message we're trying to make about how Alexander storytelling moves with the times from one medium to another, going from manuscript to prints to comics and novels to television series and movies and onto video games. They thought that seems to think it is a relevant point to have made. Final slides. Overall, I think the four of us at least are happy with how the show is going. If you haven't seen it yet, please do come along. The final weeks of the exhibition tend to be the busiest. Last Saturday was, in fact, the busiest day in the gallery so far. So please do book in advance and we look forward to hearing what you think. Thank you very much. So I'll hand back to Scott and we're happy to take questions. That's great. Thank you all for a really great insight into what it takes to put on an exhibition like this. It doesn't just happen. It happened through hard work and a lot of expertise. So I think you've demonstrated that really, really well. I have received one query, which is a form of one I was going to ask you myself. So let me pose it and if anyone wants to add a question, feel free and I'll try and allocate them to one of the curators. So the question is from Ian Gillett and he asks, when he starts, the majority of loan items came from the UK and Ireland with the exception of the Great Venice loans. And he asks, what object or objects would you like to have been able to have included had there not been the issues of COVID-19? So, Adrian, do you want to start with that and maybe you can also? Oh, I think we should all have that answer that will separate this anyway. I don't know. Coming from overseas, I'm not sure. Because of COVID, we kind of didn't look as closely as we could have done. There are some really wonderful manuscripts. Frame one that's been to the exhibition, you might remember when you, at the very beginning, there's a printed book we borrowed from National Library of Scotland that has a portrait of Alexander with Bohr's tusks. It's a weird thing. That illustration, the woodcut, was actually a copy of a manuscript illustration at Darmstadt in Germany. And I think in an ideal world, I would have liked to have seen the manuscript portrait rather than borrow a printed book, which pains me to say being a printed book expert. Can I just add one other thing? In terms of things that we would like to have borrowed, there was something I would love to borrowed. The Veronese painting of the family of Darius before Alexander. If you've been in the gallery, you know, we got a very, it's actually quite important, a very little known copy made by George Frederick Watts of the same work. But the original is in the National Gallery. It's not very far away. It's enormous. Yeah, we couldn't borrow it because the bottom line is we don't have a doorway big enough at the British Library to be able to bring a painting of that size in. But I would have loved to have had that. Both really good, really good. Ursula, something you wish that could have been included? Well, I would have liked particularly there's there's a one of our manuscripts in the in the India section in in the India section is is showing is is showing. Yeah, it's showing Alexander a copy of the Hamsa of Nuzami. And the manuscript is broken up. I mean, we had this with in the case which I don't with of the Chester Beattie manuscript and our eights Thompson manuscript illustrating the poorest battle. Anyway, that manuscript is in the Walters Library in Baltimore, and it would have been lovely to have it and to unite the manuscript together for the first time. But it wasn't possible. Well, I mean, we might have been able to borrow it. But in that case, expense was a great issue. And also, the time involved in negotiating an extra loan overseas, we did try as far as possible to look as close to the library as we could for practical reasons. Yeah, and that's all the sort of fantastic stuff in the UK. But yeah, no, that's that's interesting. Peter, something you you long for that you couldn't include in the exhibition. There was a there is a nice sculpture ahead of Alexander in a UK private collection, which is, which is an original Hellenistic piece, very little known. The first catalogue was published in the 20s. And we approached the collection, but due to COVID, that was an effect of COVID. They didn't have the staff resources necessary to actually manage the the landing of that item. So we had to give up on it, which was a sad loss, because it would have been a nice showcase for that item, which is, which can be seen there in that particular collection, but not anywhere else. And it would have been a nice context for that item to be in the exhibition, an original sculpture from the Hellenistic period, but we couldn't have it due to COVID reasons. So that was that was a sad loss. Very good. So, Iria, you've mentioned the Oliver Stone clip. Were there other things you would have liked to have been able to include? Yes. And I suspect the reason for not being included would have also been cost and rights. But mine is actually a piece of music. I think it would have made the most wonderful juxtaposition against the piece of handle that we have. But there is a song called Alexander the Great by Iron Maiden. And I think it would have just been a wonderful opportunity to have the two of them side by side to show the two different extremes that Alexander can work to. Very good. Very good. No, I hadn't heard that one. So that that is interesting. So I'm going to ask a different form, which is more about what is in the exhibition. And I'm going to put each of you on the spot. It's the invidious, which is your favorite child question. But so who shall I personally, which is your favorite item in? But can I cheat first? Because one of my absolutely most favorite items is is the book The Story of Perciphorist, which isn't Persian, about how Alexander the Great got on a boat to come back to go back to Babylon. And there was a storm and guess where he woke up on Britain's shores. And that was very unexpected for me. But in terms of Persian items, I think one of my most one of my favorites is the one which I showed in the slide. I don't know if people could see it clearly. But of the Brahmins being interviewed by Alexander, Alexander the Great dressed in his bling, frankly, and all the worldly accoutrements he could possibly have, contrasting with the Brahmins in their simple dress wearing just sort of fig leaves. And it says in the text that they ate nothing but seeds and covered themselves in leaves. So it's such a graphic description, I think that's my favorite. Ask me tomorrow, I'll say something else. Very good. In fact, I've anticipated a question here from Annie's. And she asks, I would love to know each of your favorite item in the exhibition or aspect or feature of the exhibition. So it's not just about an exhibit, but actual feature in the exhibition. So think about features of the exhibition as well as exhibits. Peter, do you want to go next? I'm happy to. So there is a kind of an odd juxtaposition of two items in the exhibition I quite like. There's a beautiful Persian manuscript recording the legend of Alexander's conquest of China as he is in battle with the champion of the Chinese emperor who turns out to be a woman in disguise. And there is a beautiful double opening in the manuscript showing an extremely elaborate image of that battle. And the legend of Alexander's invasion or attempt to invade China is specifically Persian. We don't have it in any Western sources. And all of a sudden we found an American comic book which describes Alexander's attempt to invade China in the 1980s towards the end of the Cold War. And then it says introduced by the personification of death. Alexander is invading China, where he is accepted quite favorably by the locals. But then he's turning to be too proud of himself. And they expel him with what they call the fire of the gods, which is the gunpowder. And you can clearly see the political agenda behind this and also behind the Persian image of Alexander's invasion of China. And we are sure that the creators of the comic book should not have known about the Persian tradition of Alexander's invasion to China. But here we have two stories about the same thing, the attempt to conquer China with completely different representations and completely different political agendas. And this is the first time probably, maybe the last, that we can actually show the two next to each other. Yeah, no, that's a nice, nice thing, because there are a number of these really nice juxtapositions throughout the show or surprising juxtapositions in several cases. So Iria, favorite item, favorite moment in the exhibition? Like everyone else, I think my favorite item changes each time I'm in the gallery. I would currently be leaning towards the work by the artist Romina Yi, whom I mentioned earlier. And so hers is actually, it's a 21st century retelling of the Alexander romance, but she's publishing it online, which is perhaps why I gravitate towards it. So it's an online graphic novel and it's an ongoing publication, which makes it the most recent item in the exhibition, which is lovely because the oldest item in the exhibition was created in Alexander's lifetime. So we've gone to both extremes there. And it's just a very gorgeous thing because Romina has looked at all the different versions of each tale that she can find and combined aspects from each to make her own version of the Alexander romance. And she's drawn inspiration from a lot of the manuscripts that are actually within our collections. So it's just, yeah, it's really lovely new telling of Alexander's story. Right. Yeah. No, I mean, the chronological range as well as the geographic is amazing in the show. It's good to stress out. Adrian, last but not least. Oh, let me have two. Let me have two. All right, two, two, two, you're allowed to. So there's a fun one. And that's the comic of Alexander fighting Superman, where I think from 1983, you've got one of Superman's adversaries, the planet here, one of these avatars of this planet here is Alexander the Great. And it's just the fact that this this wicked villain manages to capture Leonard Brezhnev and Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. And it's, yeah, that's the evil side of Alexander and Superman comes to the rescue. I just think that's just so bonkers. But on a much more serious note, and actually something I got quite emotional about when I found it, I think the letter from Mary Reynolds that we've gotten display in the relationships area. So that's that's about about her novel, The Persian Boy, which, you know, for a lot of people, my age was a very influential novel. And in this this personal letter that I don't think anyone really had noticed before, certainly not it's not mentioned any of her biographies. She writes to a friend, Cassie Robert, and she explains where the inspiration for The Persian Boy came from from for the actual character for Baguaz, the slave boy. And it talks about her have, it succinctly talks about her view on Alexander and his relationships, you know, the fact that Alexander's lovers were few, but constant, you know, and that's one version of the storytelling. And what's so lovely about this exhibition is you can see other takes on Alexander. So that Alexander is a particular Alexander and one that I love. But you know, you see a red-blooded heterosexual Alexander when you look at the Persian stories with all these ways that he's he's he's marrying and so forth. I think that's why the lovely things about the exhibition is they're just so many different Alexander's shown side by side, and they can't be reconciled. Right, good, good, good, good. So I'm going to ask you one final question each. And I think it's about who talked, I think you were the one who talked about the sort of legacy of the show. And what do you think is, from your point of view, the principal legacy or the most important legacy of the show? Well, Peter? This is a hard one, I think. A long-standing legacy is probably the book. We are very, very, as I mentioned in my bit of the presentation, this is probably the first ever exhibition targeting this very big task of collecting the storytelling and legends about Alexander the Great, which is very, very diverse and very complicated. It's like an entangled forest and it's very hard to find your way around it. And we think that the book is actually a good way to sum up and collect many of these stories, some of them surprising, some of them very little known, some of them more better known. And the book is giving a nice overview of the exhibition as a long-standing legacy of it, but also has nine essays devoted to various aspects of the show, introducing the Alexander romance, which was one of the most important texts of the legacy of Alexander. And it has various other texts about Alexander's relationships, Alexander on the medieval maps. So I think it constitutes a long-standing legacy and also a serious academic book, which could be consulted by many people in the future. So I think this is something that will stay on bookshelves and library shelves for a long time and we are very, very happy that it could actually appear. And we are very grateful for all the contributors to the book, including Scott and many others. Very good, good, good. So I'm just going to go and switch the light on, but Iria, do you want to say what you think in terms of legacy? Sure. So the thing I think is important, legacy is not actually specific to this exhibition. It's something that is important for all of our exhibitions, but it's actually all the students and the children that we get coming in. So we're not, this isn't aimed at children, this exhibition, but we do have a school program running alongside it. And we have school groups coming in both primary and secondary, nearly every week. In fact, I think every week, several times a week. And in just two weeks time in the February half term, we have well over 100 children coming in to the building to experience some of the different story tellings going on around Alexander and his legends. And the students that I worked with from escape studios, for example, none of them had ever been to the British Library or knew much about Alexander the Great, or indeed his legends. And I think it's that because we all remember a wonderful day from a day trip when you're a kid either with school or with your friends or family, and you just think, oh yeah, do you remember that we just did whatever? Or you just remember a story that you heard on that trip? And I think that's what this exhibition is doing. It's continuing the storytelling around Alexander, and in this case to young children. Yeah, that's a great answer. Great answer. Yeah, the influence of that sort of experience can be lifelong, lost your life, really. So, Ursula, legacy. Well, I think it, I think that the exhibition has been a wonderful opportunity to bring together so many different kinds of material. And, you know, I'm speaking with my Persian hat on now. Most of the material, we have wonderful collection items. And people know about it in the context of sort of Islamic art or, but not in this sort of general sense. And through the book, through the exhibition and through the book on the website, there will be an afterlife. Many, many people have come to me and said, oh, I have no idea that, you know, you had the same story in Persian as you have in Anglo-Saxon, you know. They're completely bowled over by it. And so we've, you know, they've, we're reaching out to far wider audiences than we maybe do in some exhibitions. And I think that it's going to have a lasting effect. People are already getting more interested and they're coming in and they're asking for photographs, digital copies and so on. And one thing leads to another. So hopefully we will really be reaching out and globally too, not just in this country, but all over the world. Great, great. Yeah, yeah, I know the continuing influences sounds really great. And last, but not least, to going Adrian, sorry. Well, on the academic side, I think the exhibition has brought academics from different fields together. So it's all building on what Ursus just pointed out really. You've got the Persianists who are learning about medieval European storytelling, a modern storytelling. And I think getting academics that normally work in their own areas to see right across and to think more globally and across time as well. I think that might be one. But I think what I really hope is that Alexander perhaps has not got a higher profile in Britain at least, as he has in some other parts of the world. And I think I'm hoping that we're raising his profile. And as a result, that there'll be more creation, more creative writing, more novels, more graphic novels, more comics, more films, more television series, more everything really inspired by Alexander and Britain. That's one things I'd like to see. Right. Okay. So I'm going to wrap up now, I think. So it's a really big thank you on your behalf to the curators for really great insights into how you go about putting an exhibition together. And thank you to them for their passion and expertise. And I thank you to all of you for attending. If you've not already visited the exhibition, I hope you have been persuaded that you absolutely have to do so. Don't leave it too long. As you see, it only runs until the 19th of February. And as Adrian said, the best thing you can do is book in advance to avoid disappointment. So thank you all very much for joining us this evening. And I hope this has been inspiring and also an enjoyable experience. Thank you all.