Peter Barber
His longstanding interest in maps soon led to a position in the map collections department. He tells Natalie Hoare about his career, the British Library’s latest exhibition, Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art, and why most geographers have got maps all wrong
I was born in Libya and came to England at the age of one and a half. My geographical interests stem from the fact that my parents were from Czechoslovakia. They were Jewish refugees, so they had to flee in rather dramatic circumstances in 1940.
In 1975, I became the British Library’s specialist on diplomatic material. About a year later, a vacancy arose for maps, and I’ve always been interested in the visual side to history. It was difficult at first as I was responsible for manuscript [handwritten and hand-drawn] maps, whereas most people are interested in printed maps. But I was neither one nor the other. The people in the map library didn’t feel that I was seriously into maps because I had a manuscript background, and the people in manuscripts felt that I wasn’t one of them because I was interested in maps.
I thought I had made an awful mistake because I’m not really a serious geographer. But Helen Wallace, who was then keeper of maps, was a great support and somebody to whom I could talk. On her advice, I did quite a lot of intensive reading and, slowly, I found that I had a sort of niche. I’ve been there now for 23 years.
It sounds clichéd, but there is no typical day in my job – every single week is different. I spend as much time as I can on acquisitions, which I absolutely love, and it’s perhaps the most important thing that I do for the British Library in the long term. The part that I enjoy most is getting antiquarian maps at auction or from dealers. Once I’ve purchased them, I tend to see them close up and judge them and so on in the basements. That’s when I get my fix of spending time with these wonderful documents.
I was responsible for the transfer of the maps from the British Museum to the British Library. It’s only a 15-minute walk between the two, but the move was a huge undertaking. When we left, we thought we had one million maps, but when we arrived, we discovered we had 4.5 million.
Maps aren’t just about geography. In the past, old maps tended to be looked at without a context. Geographers and librarians never asked the basic questions of why they were made, what purpose they served at that time and what justified their creation. The answers to those questions place the maps in the society of their time, tell us what role they played and show that maps could be used as instruments of propaganda and power.
During the past 20 years, [the idea that maps have an agenda] has become increasingly popular, thanks to the work of [British geographer and map historian] John Brian Harley and others. But before, even reputable historians of cartography would have dismissed anything other than the geographical content of the map as being mere decoration – made to sell the map but of no intrinsic interest. In a way, the exhibition is aimed at reminding geographers that there is more to a map than geography and reminding mainstream historians that if they really want to understand the culture, at least of Europe before 1800, they really need to look at maps.
The exhibition will show things we didn’t even know about before we began researching for it. One of the most unlikely things we uncovered is an enormous world map of 1582, done in manuscript. It was quite amazing that it had slipped under the radar.
The Klenke Atlas has received a lot of attention because it’s the biggest atlas in the world, but we’re also showing something much bigger – a tapestry map showing the English counties of 1590 that is 20 feet long [6.1 metres]. It was made in the 1660s for the reception room of a house owned by a Catholic family to show that they were powerful and loyal to England. The tiniest map is a coin the size of my thumbnail that shows a town view of Nuremburg. Both are symbols of patriotic and civic pride.
If I could save one map from the collection for [the benefit of] humanity, it would be the Anglo-Saxon world map of 1025 because it’s the last relatively accurate representation of the world as seen by the Romans. And if I could save one map just for myself? Probably the Müller map of Bohemia because that’s where my family came from, so I could travel there in spirit.
Curriculum vitae
1948 Born in Benghazi, Libya
1970 Graduated from the University of Sussex with a degree in international relations
1971 Graduated from the London School of Economics with a postgraduate degree in international history
1975–79 Research assistant, British Library
1979–87 Responsible for manuscript maps, British Library
1987–2001 Deputy map librarian, British Library
2001–present Head of map collections, British Library
2008 Recipient of International Map Collectors Society Award
For more information about Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art, which runs from 30 April to 19 September, visit www.bl.uk/magnificentmaps
I was born in Libya and came to England at the age of one and a half. My geographical interests stem from the fact that my parents were from Czechoslovakia. They were Jewish refugees, so they had to flee in rather dramatic circumstances in 1940.
In 1975, I became the British Library’s specialist on diplomatic material. About a year later, a vacancy arose for maps, and I’ve always been interested in the visual side to history. It was difficult at first as I was responsible for manuscript [handwritten and hand-drawn] maps, whereas most people are interested in printed maps. But I was neither one nor the other. The people in the map library didn’t feel that I was seriously into maps because I had a manuscript background, and the people in manuscripts felt that I wasn’t one of them because I was interested in maps.
I thought I had made an awful mistake because I’m not really a serious geographer. But Helen Wallace, who was then keeper of maps, was a great support and somebody to whom I could talk. On her advice, I did quite a lot of intensive reading and, slowly, I found that I had a sort of niche. I’ve been there now for 23 years.
It sounds clichéd, but there is no typical day in my job – every single week is different. I spend as much time as I can on acquisitions, which I absolutely love, and it’s perhaps the most important thing that I do for the British Library in the long term. The part that I enjoy most is getting antiquarian maps at auction or from dealers. Once I’ve purchased them, I tend to see them close up and judge them and so on in the basements. That’s when I get my fix of spending time with these wonderful documents.
I was responsible for the transfer of the maps from the British Museum to the British Library. It’s only a 15-minute walk between the two, but the move was a huge undertaking. When we left, we thought we had one million maps, but when we arrived, we discovered we had 4.5 million.
Maps aren’t just about geography. In the past, old maps tended to be looked at without a context. Geographers and librarians never asked the basic questions of why they were made, what purpose they served at that time and what justified their creation. The answers to those questions place the maps in the society of their time, tell us what role they played and show that maps could be used as instruments of propaganda and power.
During the past 20 years, [the idea that maps have an agenda] has become increasingly popular, thanks to the work of [British geographer and map historian] John Brian Harley and others. But before, even reputable historians of cartography would have dismissed anything other than the geographical content of the map as being mere decoration – made to sell the map but of no intrinsic interest. In a way, the exhibition is aimed at reminding geographers that there is more to a map than geography and reminding mainstream historians that if they really want to understand the culture, at least of Europe before 1800, they really need to look at maps.
The exhibition will show things we didn’t even know about before we began researching for it. One of the most unlikely things we uncovered is an enormous world map of 1582, done in manuscript. It was quite amazing that it had slipped under the radar.
The Klenke Atlas has received a lot of attention because it’s the biggest atlas in the world, but we’re also showing something much bigger – a tapestry map showing the English counties of 1590 that is 20 feet long [6.1 metres]. It was made in the 1660s for the reception room of a house owned by a Catholic family to show that they were powerful and loyal to England. The tiniest map is a coin the size of my thumbnail that shows a town view of Nuremburg. Both are symbols of patriotic and civic pride.
If I could save one map from the collection for [the benefit of] humanity, it would be the Anglo-Saxon world map of 1025 because it’s the last relatively accurate representation of the world as seen by the Romans. And if I could save one map just for myself? Probably the Müller map of Bohemia because that’s where my family came from, so I could travel there in spirit.
Curriculum vitae
1948 Born in Benghazi, Libya
1970 Graduated from the University of Sussex with a degree in international relations
1971 Graduated from the London School of Economics with a postgraduate degree in international history
1975–79 Research assistant, British Library
1979–87 Responsible for manuscript maps, British Library
1987–2001 Deputy map librarian, British Library
2001–present Head of map collections, British Library
2008 Recipient of International Map Collectors Society Award
For more information about Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art, which runs from 30 April to 19 September, visit www.bl.uk/magnificentmaps
