It can be an uncomfortable feeling, though doubtless one all museums claim to create, when history breaks through the skin of the everyday world like a bramble slashing a careless shin on an ambling walk.
Would I even notice, never mind be made twitchily uneasy, if the Yorkshire Museum gave a blatantly white rose-ist account of the Wars of the Roses, or the Tower of London a wilfully Norman justification for the fortifications? Even if I did, it wouldn't be personal: I may have lived here half my life, but they're not my kings and queens, not my Thames.
But it's odd to realise that some of the Infant Samuel's ancestors could well have slaughtered another lot within the walls of a museum. In fact, as far as we know, they didn't - the long line of British army officers on one grandmother's side were far too grand to shell the other grandmother's scruffy bunch of Irish nationalists in the 1916 rebellion in Dublin, or to ward the prisoners in Kilmainham Gaol.
Kilmainham is now a fully fledged museum, with elaborate interpretation of its 150-year history before 1916. When we first went as children in 1966 it was thrillingly ruinous and dangerous, curated by restorers who were almost entirely veterans of the story it told. In that anniversary year a simple tale of heroic militant patriotism matched well the popular mood.
A lot of blood has flowed under the bridge since then - but the core of the visit, the guided tour culminating in the reverent visit to the stonebreaker's yard where the 1916 leaders were shot, has barely changed in tone: it makes no allowances for the grey complexities of family and national histories.
All over the world, museum curators have to tell stories which resonate into the present day. Somebody, some day, will have to decide how to tell the story of Georgia, Russia and South Ossetia. If the line between propaganda and historical record wavers, most visitors will never even notice - but some will, and shiver.
Would I even notice, never mind be made twitchily uneasy, if the Yorkshire Museum gave a blatantly white rose-ist account of the Wars of the Roses, or the Tower of London a wilfully Norman justification for the fortifications? Even if I did, it wouldn't be personal: I may have lived here half my life, but they're not my kings and queens, not my Thames.
But it's odd to realise that some of the Infant Samuel's ancestors could well have slaughtered another lot within the walls of a museum. In fact, as far as we know, they didn't - the long line of British army officers on one grandmother's side were far too grand to shell the other grandmother's scruffy bunch of Irish nationalists in the 1916 rebellion in Dublin, or to ward the prisoners in Kilmainham Gaol.
Kilmainham is now a fully fledged museum, with elaborate interpretation of its 150-year history before 1916. When we first went as children in 1966 it was thrillingly ruinous and dangerous, curated by restorers who were almost entirely veterans of the story it told. In that anniversary year a simple tale of heroic militant patriotism matched well the popular mood.
A lot of blood has flowed under the bridge since then - but the core of the visit, the guided tour culminating in the reverent visit to the stonebreaker's yard where the 1916 leaders were shot, has barely changed in tone: it makes no allowances for the grey complexities of family and national histories.
All over the world, museum curators have to tell stories which resonate into the present day. Somebody, some day, will have to decide how to tell the story of Georgia, Russia and South Ossetia. If the line between propaganda and historical record wavers, most visitors will never even notice - but some will, and shiver.
