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Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the second of this year's London Review of Books lectures at the British Museum.

We're particularly pleased that

this lecture is happening on today. And with all the least we could do, we'll start with a proper

welcome to all, and with a suitably chased Valentine by G.F. Watts, sent to the Honourable

Lady Taylor, he tells us on the back. Thank you. Thank you. But as we thought of this is our Valentine to everybody, we thought that really it's fairly tame, given that over the last year we've had a couple of exhibitions with some very, very powerful

expressions of love in unexpected forms. First of all, of course, the pan with the goat, about

which this evening's lecturer spoke eloquently and forsoomely in the Pompeii live exhibition.

And then in the Japanese exhibition, the subject that was entitled Lady with an Octopus.

I'm not sure this is actually a lady, but that's maybe a linguistic distinction that doesn't apply in the original Japanese.

So we felt actually we needed some kind of stronger message of our affection for you

and for our lecturer and for the LRB.

So turning to Florence, where of course one turns with these things,

Botticelli obligingly painted a Valentine.

As you may know, there's beautiful little Judith and Holofernes, Judith who cuts off Holoferne's head, thus taking

his reason captive, and then Blithely carries it happily home home and it is thought that it was actually sent

by the man whose portrait is the head of Holofernes as a tribute to the Judith who had captured

him but that seemed a little bloodthirsty for our relationship with the London Review of Books.

Because the London Review of Books has, over the last few years with these lecture series,

played a very, very important part in the intellectual life of the British Museum.

It has played a critical part, I think, in enabling us to widen the debate about the objects in the museum, in

exhibitions, about the themes that the museum addresses. And I would like to take this opportunity

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