Comic Relief

‘EVERY few years London likes to confuse tourists by moving its ancient monuments around.

‘A wonderful parody on the Thatchers’ - Anorak

The British Library, for instance, used to be part of the British Museum before it was moved to its new premises near St Pancras station.

However, such moves come at a cost – and the Telegraph reports this morning that more than 8,000 items have gone missing from the library’s collection since its move.

The biggest theft, it says, is believed to be by a contractor who stole £17,000 worth of comics from a storage area, including the first Beano to feature Dennis The Menace.

Also missing are rare 16th Century maps which collectors cut out of books using a razor blade and a 1540 collection by Roman poet Horace.

However, the Library defended its security and said many of the missing items had probably been miscatalogued.

“We are talking about 8,000 books, documents and recordings,” a spokesman said, “out of a total collection of 160 million, which is a tiny percentage.”

Some of other items missing included CDs by Black Sabbath and a Ford Cortina manual.’

Posted: 28th, February 2005 | In: Uncategorized Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink