We're recruited almost immediately by a tour guide and assume initially, and a bit underenthusiastically, that we're getting a general layout of the building for future use. But it's shorter and more fun than that. A look at about ten individual items with historical background, a little humour, and quirky bits of information. Starts with a painted death mask of Henry VII, one which was carried through the streets of London on his coffin. A modest looking man who apparently disliked pomp and ceremony and, according to our guide, a man who often seemed worried. Actually, we can think of more reason for him to worry than she can. He's the man who took the throne from Richard III, and there's good reason to think that the deaths of the princes in the tower were wrongly attributed to Richard by Tudor historians who had good reason to wish to please Henry. But that's another story and not one that we raise.
My favourite of the V&A artefacts is the great bed of Ware, a large bed that dates back to the late fourteen hundreds and was still well known at the time of Shakespeare, with a reference appearing in Twelfth Night. We'd seen the bed before, but the guide has information that is new to us. The bed was located in an inn and it was possible to reserve a place in it - the bed being shared with other travellers, often strangers. Normally, the guide says, the travellers would all be male, although there was one occasion, apparently, when it was booked by a group of eight butchers and their wives - pretty crowded even for such an enormous bed! But it's certainly true, as she says, that privacy is a modern (and possibly western) value. Historically even royalty dressed - and used the toilet for that matter - with others in the room.
Some of the art in the museum, including enormous "cartoons" by Raphael, paintings made as a preliminary for the production of tapestries, were collected by Charles I, who was quite a collector of great art before his execution. The guide tells us that Oliver Cromwell, his successor, paid tradesmen with works of art - seventy percent of which Charles II managed to get back after the Restoration.