I feel drawn to mention this week that one of the best places you can ever visit in London, in my humble opinion, is the British Museum, and its a stone’s throw from LSE. I really enjoy being there, and I don’t mind disclosing my partiality for the place. I happen to have a yearly membership, which is just a great way to both commit to visiting regularly and getting all the exhibitions through the year included. However, all of the permanent galleries are always open for free and there is, literally, a whole world of culture and history to see there.

Although I don’t buy in to the whole “greatest city in the world” mythology, or think that one city is better than another, I do like to give credit where it is due, and London does have great museums. This is just a fact. I think there is a museum in London for just about everything. And while there is a lot wrong with London, or rather, a lot that doesn’t always work in the way I would like, the cultural offerings do make up for it. The British Museum is probably one of the jewels in the “things to do” crown.

And the thing about the British Museum is that it really isn’t very British at all. I leave there more often than not feeling more a citizen of the world than this little offshoot of Europe. True, there are larger museums in the world and larger collections, but are these the standards by which culture can really be judged, the amount of footfall?

That’s another conversation I guess, but I leave this post with a word of advice as well as caution: don’t try to see everything and instead spend time viewing a few selected galleries, and, most importantly, remember that it’s usually always busy, so if you don’t like crowds buy a membership and once a month you practically get the museum to yourself during member’s evening, which is a real treat.