Took time out this evening to go to a reception in Edinburgh hosted by the National Library of Scotland. It was all about the Murray Archive – the records and letters of seven generations of the family publishing firm whose authors included Byron, David Livingstone and Charles Darwin.
As Father Ted said to Dougal, ‘It makes you think.’ Particularly on this day when Microsoft launches Vista .. that such an archive will probably never be built up again. My biographers are welcome to the 5000 E Mails from the last year or two now stored on my GMail account .. and to the old sermons carefully backed up on Mozy.com .. But it will never have the weight [literally] of the seven boxes of my grandfather’s sermons all handwritten in hard-back notebooks which are in the Church of Ireland’s RCB Library in Dublin.
Tomorrow afternoon, I’m off to London for a service on Thursday morning – supporting our own Sheila Redwood who is becoming our Provincial President and a Trustee of MU.