Lord Cormack’s Monthly Message

On Thursday 24^th April we had a splendid gathering in the Collection to see the Joseph Banks exhibition and to explain to our guests some of the plans for celebrations in 2015.

The Mayor of Lincoln and the Chairman of the County Council, and Lincoln’s MP, along with a large number of Deputy Lieutenants and others were present. Everyone was most positive and encouraging. I was able to explain some of our plans for the Three Choirs Festival, which will be held in June next year and to report on some of the treasures we will be displaying in Lincolnshire’s Great Exhibition which will be based in the Usher and the Collection itself, as well as in the Medieval and Wren Libraries in the Cathedral, and in the Castle.

The exhibition in the Collection will be focused on great Lincolnshire figures from Gilbert of Sempringham, who founded the only English monastic order in Lincolnshire in the 12^th century, to Margaret Thatcher, our Country’s only female Prime Minster and the longest serving Prime Minister of democratic times. There will be items on loan from the British Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and many other important public and private collections, with a special section of the exhibition devoted to treasures, many of them largely unknown, in Lincolnshire private collections.

Most of you who are reading this will already have seen how the Castle is being transformed. It is looking absolutely splendid and when all the work is complete, in April of next year, the Castle will indeed be revealed as one of the great treasures of the land, sitting proudly opposite the very greatest of Cathedrals.

One final word. If you have not yet visited the Joseph Banks exhibition please do so before it closes on the 11^th May.