Today (18th May 2021) was jolly nearly a disaster. It was the day after the first phase of ending Covid lockdown restrictions, and I had it down in my diary as being the press day for the opening of the Nero exhibition at the British Museum. So we decided to celebrate. I put on my best suit and bow tie for the first time in over a year, and ventured out into the big wide world and down to the British Museum.
But when we got there: disaster. We were a week too early. The Becket exhibition opened yesterday, but Nero does not open for another week. Nonetheless, the gatekeeper took pity on us and let us in: why not see the Becket exhibition instead? So we made our way in and investigated Thomas Becket.
But, oh dear! They have got Thomas Becket all wrong. The real disaster of the Middle Ages was the constant battle between church and state. The church was far too powerful, and always undermining the kings; as a result, the Middle Ages are a terrible muddle (see Wars of the Roses). However, Henry II was a not-bad king, as kings go, and he found a bright young civil servant called Thomas Becket who he promoted at a young age to be Chancellor, what we would call Prime Minister. He then thought that Becket would be the ideal person to bring the church to heel, so he made him Archbishop of Canterbury, even though he wasn’t actually a priest at the time.
