Exhibitions

King's building foyer exhibition

The David Clarke Collection

David Clarke (1931- 2014) was a pageant master. Not only did he produce pageants, but he also researched and documented pageant history from 1905 onwards. 

His collection includes books of words (essentially scripts), pamphlets, ground plans, photographs, sheet music, posters and more. From historic pageants to his own productions, the materials provide a valuable and unique insight into all aspects of pageant productions.

It can be suggested that pageants were an outward expression of local historical identity in relation to wider national identity. The solidifying of local identity gave the people of a particular town or village an understanding of the role that they, and their ancestors, may have played in the history of Britain.

Festival of Empire, 1911 Pageants were also seen as a way of making history more entertaining to a mass audience.

Before television became readily available, these historical pageant productions offered a way of increasing interaction with any historical subject or period.

This exhibition will display various objects of interest, whilst providing useful background knowledge on the history of pageants, pageant masters and why these events took place.

This exhibition has been researched and compiled by Fraser Simpson, MA student (History Department, King’s College London), and features the David Clarke Collection, recently acquired by King’s College Archives.

Link to the online catalogue

Permanent displays

Displays of items from the College Archives are on view in the Student Informal Study Space and foyer of the Physics department offices.  Access to some of these areas is controlled.

Please see Archives and Special Collections online exhibitions to view the full selection of online exhibitions.

Selected online exhibitions are detailed below

Online exhibition pages authored by Archives and Special Collections staff give a good idea of the breadth of subject matter our collections cover and the quality of images we can make available.

Increasingly, the exhibitions we create are supplemented by online exhibitions to make content accessible to those unable to visit in person.

Recently added online exhibitions include those relating to the history of print and the theme of pageantry in our Archives collections.

They also feature research on former King's professor and Christian Socialist Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-72), and the Library's holdings of incunabula (early printed books).

Some of these online exhibitions were curated from research undertaken by Library and Archives interns. See the Projects tab for information related to the interns' work.

Selected online exhibitions from recent years

Voyage to Madagascar: Thomas Locke Lewis and the Anglo-Merina Treaty of 1817

Representing the unfamiliar: Photography in the British Empire 1866-1938

Parkinson of the disease

Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy, espionage during the Cold War

Sir William Young's Essay on Tobago, 1810

The nearest run thing you ever saw: the Battle of Waterloo

In this online exhibition, originally held to mark the bicentenary of this momentous day in European history, we look at the course of the battle itself, the military tactics and techniques involved and the treatment afforded to those wounded on the battlefield.

We look too at the careers of the two key protagonists – Napoleon and Wellington – both before and after the battle.

Coming to London 

Coming to London has been added to our online Archives exhibitions. It looks at the way King’s students have experienced London from challenges of the nineteenth century, through to the wars of the twentieth century - including overseas students welcomed as refugees fleeing oppression. 

The great leveller: humanity's struggle against infectious disease

Ever since the Neolithic Revolution established the basis for settled agriculture and brought humankind into close and insanitary contact with animals, infectious disease has been the inseparable companion of human development.

It has insinuated itself into patterns of settlement, trade, conquest and war, and shows no sign of abating.

Our choice of exhibition theme reflects the leading role which the constituent parts of King’s College London have long played in medical research and, more recently, in the history of medicine and science.

The exhibition can be viewed here.

In the Beginning....

This online exhibition from the Archives, In the Beginning... explains the early history of King's College London.  Topics discussed and illustrated include the reason for its foundation, its location on the Strand in London next to Somerset House, its construction and early college life.

Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives annual lecture

Since it began in 1988, the Liddell Hart annual lecture has attracted notable guest speakers on topics which range from the role of intelligence in World War Two, through to the implications of the mass media on modern warfare and the psychiatric effects of war.

The most recent lecture was delivered by Michael S Neiberg, Chair of War Studies at the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on Monday 29 October 2018.

Liddell Hart himself said that war was always a matter of doing evil in the hopes that good may come of it. This talk explored the good that he and others hoped they might be able to forge from the evils of 1914-1918. It focussed largely on the new role of the United States, examining America's newly-found power, its attempt to base the peace on principles rather than diplomatic dealing, and its fundamental lack of understanding of the problems the war had unleashed. It ended with a case study on America's surprising and long-forgotten role in the Syria crisis of 1919.