Re: And for bibliophiles
Hint: The Norrington Room (what appears to be a small town bookshop holds a subterranean secret).
While we are on the subject, turn 180 degrees and enter the Museum for the History of Science in the old Ashmolean building next to the Sheldonian Theatre. In the basement you will find (casually as you do) Fleming's agar plates and testubes, and a couple of the white enamel bedpans filled with wallpaper paste (I'm serious) used to cultivate antibiotics on a semi-industrial scale. On the staircase on the way down is a pastel drawing of the moon by John Russell, RA. This huge pastel was drawn by hand at the telescope (Herschel reflector). A smaller copy is in the Soho House Museum in Birmingham (Boulton was a staunch Methodist). Then you have a gallery full of astrolabes (the iPhone of the first millennium). Amazing.
Round the corner and down the road from the Weston/New Bodleian is the Pitt Rivers' museum (in the back of the Museum of Natural History). Shrunken heads, canoes and Parkas. Ace.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
