Describe a Library or Museum You Have Visited

The place I'd like to describe is the National Maritime Museum, which is down in Greenwich in London. I've been a handful of times, but the visit that really stands out was one I made last year with an old university friend who's absolutely mad about ships. Neither of us expected much, and yet we ended up staying right until closing time.

I'd actually walked past it loads of times without going in — I always assumed it'd be a bit dry, just glass cases full of old maps. But my friend insisted, and the second we stepped into the main hall I realised how wrong I'd been. It's this huge, light-filled space with an enormous globe in the middle and full-size boats hanging overhead. It didn't feel like a stuffy museum at all; it felt more like a treasure chest someone had cracked open.

We spent hours wandering through the galleries. There was a whole section on exploration and trade, and another on how people actually lived on board these cramped wooden ships for months on end. What I loved was that so much of it was hands-on — you could steer a virtual ship into port, which we were both hopeless at, and there were recordings of sailors' letters being read aloud, which really brought the whole thing to life.

But the reason it truly stuck with me was one particular exhibit — a small display of personal objects that ordinary sailors had carried: a worn photograph, a carved pipe, a letter that was never sent. For some reason that hit me far harder than all the grand paintings of admirals. It suddenly made history feel human, like these weren't just names in a textbook but real people with families they missed. I remember standing there for a good few minutes, completely absorbed. That's what a great museum does, I think — it doesn't just inform you, it makes you feel connected to people you'll never meet. I left feeling like I understood something about my own country's past that I'd never really grasped before.

So that's the museum I'd choose. I've recommended it to pretty much everyone since, and I always tell them to ignore the grand stuff at first and go straight for the small, personal things — that's where the real magic is.