Welcome to the British Museum!

Have you ever been to London? It’s an amazing city, rich of history, parks, entertainments of various kinds, shopping streets, restaurants of food from all over the world and museums and artistic buildings providing periodically some of the most powerful exhibitions!

 

One of the greatest museums in London is undoubtedly the British Museum, dedicated to human history and culture, located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection, numbering some 8 million works, is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence and originates from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present.  The museum first opened to the public on 15 January 1759 in Montagu House in Bloomsbury, on the site of the current museum building. Its expansion over the following two and a half centuries was largely a result of an expanding British colonial footprint and has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, the first being the British Museum (Natural History) in South Kensington in 1881.

 

Although today principally a museum of cultural art objects and antiquities, the British Museum was founded as a "universal museum". Its foundations lie in the will of the physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753). During the course of his lifetime Sloane gathered an enviable collection of curiosities consisting of around 71,000 objects of all kinds, including some 40,000 printed books, 7,000 manuscripts, extensive natural history specimens including 337 volumes of dried plants, prints and drawings from Sudan, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Ancient Near and Far East and the Americas.

Today the museum no longer houses collections of natural history, and the books and manuscripts it once held now form part of the independent British Library. The Museum nevertheless preserves its universality in its collections of artefacts representing the cultures of the world, ancient and modern. As part of its very large website, the museum has the largest online database of objects in the collection of any museum in the world. Popular exhibitions including "Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum" and "Ice Age Art" are credited with increasing the number of visitors.

 

The British Museum houses – among the countless departments – the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of Egyptian antiquities outside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. A collection of immense importance for its range and quality, it includes objects of all periods from virtually every site of importance in Egypt and the Sudan. The second-floor galleries have a selection of the museum's collection of 140 mummies and coffins, the largest outside Cairo: high proportion of the collection comes from tombs or contexts associated with the cult of the dead.

 

Not curious enough to visit it? Well, have a look at the wonderful website of the British Museum and just try to imagine to be there and to take a tour… Write an essay (using approximately 300 words) pretending to be in London and to have a trip aiming at the discovery of the amazing world of the British Museum. Describe your emotions and what you expect from this imaginary trip, choosing one of the departments of the museum you like best. Then, choose another city among the English Speaking Countries focusing on another artistic location.

http://www.britishmuseum.org/ 

The new face of English music: Ed Sheeran

There’s no need to introduce him, he’s the new male voice of English musical panorama, so fascinating for young fans and so appreciated award winning artist by the international record industry executives: Ed Sheeran is undoubtedly one among the greatest young singer-songwriters and musicians of the latest 10 years. If you don’t remember The A Team or Lego House, the two singles of his debut album +, you’re at least familiar with the ballad refrain of Thinking Out Loud. Touching scenes reminding us of films like Dirty Dancing involve our artist while dancing with an amazing dancer on the notes of his romantic track: the video on YouTube has currently got about 554 millions views and about 3 millions likes.

 

 Singing in a local church choir from the age of four and learning guitar at a very young age, he began writing songs during his time at High School in Suffolk, where he moved as a child with his family from West Yorkshire. Deeply inspired and influenced by The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Eminem, he moved to London in 2008 and began playing his two first independent EPs (The Orange Room EP and You Need Me) in very small venues. Throughout 2010, Sheeran began to be seen by more people over the internet through YouTube and his fan-base grew, with him also getting credit from The Independent newspaper, England football captain Rio Ferdinand and Elton John. 2011 is his debut year: the single The A Team was released as a digital download in the UK becoming Sheeran’s lead single for his first studio album entitled +. It entered the UK Singles Chart at number three, selling over 58,000 copies in the first week and becoming a top ten hit in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway and the Netherlands.

 

He gained greater and greater success with his second studio album X (read “multiply”), released in 2014, containing the hit Thinking Out Loud, whose music video achieved almost three million views within 24 hours from its release. Its sweet melody, accompanied by his delicate voice and appearance (the red of his hair is so typically British!), makes Ed Sheeran the new image of English pop/folk music.  

All you need is ... music!

Have you ever listen to All You Need is Love? It's just one of the several popular songs by the greatest English rock/pop band The Beatles. You have never heard about them? It's absolutely impossible! They stand for the most influential and representative icon of English music of all times. If you're not sure about their songs and music, just skip on YouTube link below and let their sound get to your ears: you'll immediately recognize it from the very starting notes! But first, let's have a look at their origin! 

They were from Liverpool and joined in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul MacCartney (the two primary songwriters), George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they experimented with different genres, from pop ballads to psychedelia and hard rock. In the early Sixties they became so popular that they came to be perceived as an embodiment of the ideals shared by the era's sociocultural revolutions. 

They gained success in the United Kingdom after their first hit, Love Me Do, in late 1962. They acquired the nickname "the Fab Four" as Beatlemania grew in Britain over the following year, and by early 1964 they had become international stars, leading the "British Invasion" of the United States pop market. From 1965 onwards, the Beatles produced what many consider their finest material, including the innovative and widely influential albums Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver (1966), Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The Beatles (commonly known as the White Album, 1968) and Abbey Road (1969), that one with the well-known LP cover portraying the four guys crossing the famous street in London where their recording studio was. There's no tourist in London who doesn't take a picture while walking on that crosswalk the way the band did!

They broke up in 1970, but they all had successfull musical carreers, especially Lennon and McCartney. In particular the latter one is still musically active. 

Now, let's enjoy their music! But don't forget to pay attention to the lyrics: it's one of the most effective ways to learn new words and new language structures of English. :) 

 

And now it's your turn! What kind of music do you listen to? Are there any English, American, Irish or whatever other bands/singers you most like? Talk about your favourite music, tell us about it, how you found it, why you like it so much and in what ways they are now the brand new icons of English/American musical culture! ;)