Current exhibition:
Hand writing history: 200 years of personal diaries
The Weston Room, Maughan Library. Wednesday 17 April to Sunday 13 October 2024. Open: 10.00-17.00 daily.
For the past 40 years artist Dylan Jonas Stone has collected personal diaries, and his unique collection now numbers over 200 diaries, acquired at flea markets, car boot sales and online, as well as other printed and manuscript ephemera. The diaries range in date from the first decade of the 19th century to the present day. They document the lives of ordinary people, their joys and sorrows, the humdrum occurrences of daily existence and those occasions when global events intervened to change those lives for better or worse.
This exhibition has previously been shown at venues in New York, Orkney and Norfolk, and each time Stone has worked with the hosting institution to adapt the content to its setting. Here at King’s we have complemented the Dylan Jonas Stone Collection with selected items, including diaries, from our own special collections and archives to take the visitor on a chronological journey through 200 years of individual human lives.
In 1808 a mother mourns the death of her seven-year-old daughter; in 1917 an officer on the Western Front records a day spent under fire; in 1944 an ARP warden notes V2 attacks in south London; in 1975 an aspiring rock musician hitch-hikes his way around Europe. Some diarists use their diaries to record past events, others to note future appointments, to reflect, to doodle, as a repository for favourite recipes or as a container for physical possessions, such as scraps of cloth, letters or printed ephemera.
Today, with so many aspects of our lives recorded digitally, the future of the handwritten personal diary may seem uncertain. Blogs, social media posts and other online means of self-publication have proliferated and testify in their own way to the enduring human desire to document our lives. The handwritten pocket diary, however, has unique values of privacy and portability. Personal witnesses to social history, these diaries let us into otherwise unknown lives; will the historians of the future have the same opportunities or will digital obsolescence deny them access to the diaries of today?
The exhibition is free to visit.
Please download and complete the entry ticket below and ensure you bring some photographic ID.
Hand writing history exhibition ticket
Exhibition closure dates:
- Tuesday 8 October, 14.30-17.00
- Wednesday 9 October, until 11.30
- Thursday 10 October - until 13.00
The Weston Room
The Weston Room incorporates many features from the former Chapel of the Masters of the Rolls, including three 16th and 17th century funeral monuments.
One of these is a terracotta figure of Dr Yonge (Master of the Rolls and Dean of York, who died in 1516) which was sculpted by Pietro Torrigiano (1472-1528) who also created Henry VII’s tomb in Westminster Abbey and is said to have broken Michelangelo's nose in a tavern brawl.
There are also memorials to Richard Alington (who died in 1561, a brother-in-law of a Master) and Lord Bruce of Kinloss, a Master who died in 1616.
From 1902 until 1986 the rebuilt Chapel, now deconsecrated, provided a Museum for the Public Record Office. Stained-glass windows showing the armorial bearings of some of the 17th century Masters had been preserved, and more were added in 1899.
Restoration work for King's College London has revealed a fine mosaic flooring, probably laid in 1898.
A memorial to former staff members of the Public Record Office who died in the First World War is also sited in the room.