Love in the Museum

On Valentine's Day the Museum of London held its annual Masquerade Ball. Hundreds of revellers wearing eighteenth-century costume (plus a few in white collar and tie) evoked the romance and jiggery-pokery of the city's Pleasure Gardens.

In fitting with the romantic occasion, Write Queer London took centre stage. Peter Daniels and John McCullough read new poems commissioned for the festival - the former reciting a ribald ballad on the ill-fated Captain Rigby, the latter a moving sonnet on the Roman Emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous, inspired by the bust of Antinous in the British Museum. Buffy Noble, winner of the festival's poetry competition, mesmerised the audience with The Secret Lives of Shirts. To bring the evening to a close, I considered where we might find love in museums - answers available on the Untold London blog.