Writing: Making your Mark
Fascinating exhibition at the British Library looking at the development of writing. I’d never really thought about the evolution of writing and this show told the story in a clear and engaging way. I found it very moving how often early pieces of writing concern mundane personal things like a person’s wages or how much someone sold goods for. In particular I loved a small piece of broken pot from 110AD which was a woman called Thinabella’s licence to be a sex worker for a day. The only record we have of that person. I was fascinated to see how letters developed and the display that took the capital letter A from a hieroglyph of a antelope’s head turning round to form the letter we know today. Also to see how Renaissance humanists changed writing from the Gothic script to a text which became the basis of modern printed text. There were sections on the different materials and techniques from sticks to keyboards and on how we learn to write and what writing means to peop...