Christopher Hilton
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Christopher Hilton
@chilton-bb.bsky.social
Head of Archive & Library at The Red House, http://brittenpearsarts.org. Archives, music, metadata; side orders of architecture, landscape history & electronic noise.
Reposted by Christopher Hilton
Latest update from @britishlibrary.bsky.social says they are launching a new version of their main catalogue on Monday 8 December and around that time also launch an interim version of their Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue. Hooray!
www.bl.uk/stories/news...
Restoring our services – November 2025 update
In the coming weeks and months we will be restoring a number of key functions.
www.bl.uk
November 22, 2025 at 12:19 PM
One of the visceral items in the archive here is a letter from her to an Aldeburgh resident, setting out how she was offered a post in apartheid S. Africa which was withdrawn when she arrived and they saw the colour of her skin:
www.bpacatalogue.org/archive/MSC109. The injustice burns on the page.
Britten Pears Arts Integrated Catalogue - Archive - MSC109
Letters to and from Mary Heron
www.bpacatalogue.org
November 21, 2025 at 10:52 AM
Enjoy! I saw them in Sheffield last month and it was a surprisingly warm experience; the tribe gathering once again, celebrating the fact of still being here and mourning those like Kirk who aren't.
November 21, 2025 at 8:23 AM
See also the discovery scene, when the head calls out to searchers ("Her, her, her" in Anglo-Saxon): bsky.app/profile/enni...
20th November is the feast of St Edmund King and Martyr. Here his severed head crying 'hic,hic,hic' adorns the vellum repairing f.322r.

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 002III; 'The Bury Bible'; 12th c; Bury St Edmunds Abbey; f.322r
@parkerlibcccc.bsky.social @corpuscambridge.bsky.social
November 20, 2025 at 7:14 PM
It's always quite something to handle this instrument - as well as being played by two major composers (and taken across the Atlantic and back by Britten), it also took part in two Verdi premieres. Today my job was to dispatch it to the specialist restorer; keep well, viola, and see you soon. 2/2
November 20, 2025 at 5:40 PM
Good to hear! I often point out to kids from Lowestoft how they've got a seriously big figure to claim as their own: my local town growing up was Crewe, and nobody famous has *ever* come from Crewe.
November 17, 2025 at 7:47 PM
God yes. The way that she was just suddenly there on the edge of the firelight, freezing the ground...
November 17, 2025 at 12:07 PM
The other perk of the timing, of course, is that you get to do some Christmas shopping by going crazy with a different insitution's merch.
(Illustration, book-tree in the basement shop.)
November 16, 2025 at 11:35 AM