I must have fallen in love with the British Museum as a child of nine or ten when my Primary School teacher used to take us on school trips there on frequent occasions. Sometimes these were for specific exhibitions such as the Captain Cook’s first voyage bicentenary in 1968, but it soon became my first choice for outings when my parents wanted to know where to take me in the school holidays.
When I secured a job in the Marine Directorate of the Department of Transport in 1990 in High Holborn I was delighted primarily as it afforded me the oportunity to attend lunchtime lectures and gallery tours at the nearby British Museum. I went to these two or three times a week and soon became very knowledgable on a number of areas of the museum. I also joined the Friends organisation which held special open evenings once a month which I also attended whenever I could. It was to my great delight then that I saw advertised in the Friends magazine an invitaiton to train as a volunteer gallery guide in 1993. They had already run a pilot in the Islamic Gallery which had proved very popular with visitors. I applied and was accepted for training for the next area, the European Galleries. I have never looked back from then.