I don’t disagree, at least in the principle of interacting with certain items and stories that couldn’t solely be experienced through printed words and pictures. But that is a minor point and slightly selfish in its presumptions of viewer awareness and access to particular objects deemed suitable for visitor perusal; a little too classist still, despite aims at knocking those barriers down.

However, being responsible for having to maintain a place (possibly, or no doubt, legally) is surely a legacy worth ending, not continuing to bow to those that somehow have chosen a (somewhat ridiculous) version of immortality.

As it ever was, those with money tend to have liked to make statements of power and control: there is nothing quite like a structure, encasing many good, bad, ugly and questionable outcomes (from an outsider’s perspective), be they physical or ephemeral, to bolster an owner’s ego, purpose and some profligacy.

Tarring all history with the same brush and treating it all as if worth preserving doesn’t help matters, doesn’t help show the true diversity of life. But, keeping these many places (alongside the seemingly national obsession with nostalgia) running is, even more so these days, quite out-dated and not apt.

But hey: money and a will can ‘buy’ someone preservation, right?

Okay, so trades and crafts can be kept, learned alongside and by enthusiastic people and causes that help focus and channel those efforts, but at what expense?

Keeping a clapped out table and then getting trades people and specialists to ‘bring it back to life’ is really too much and following that process to big houses of old and even exposed outside locations is just really a waste of money and not really that helpful to the future.

I understand just buying new for replacement’s sake is not (necessarily) helpful to any of us, least of all the planet, but preserving a writing desk or table, or whatever it gets called, is tantamount to a pointless task if ever there was one.

I am all for fixing and people trying and finding new (and old) skills to make something useful and have new life and use, but a table belonging to a somewhat talented author, but with questionable views, no doubt among many other tables of other eras that ‘need’ and get preservation, just seems a waste of effort, resources and time.

Similar to preserving, from a particular time in its life, a semi-detached house (or another’s brick wallpaper) because someone well-known once lived there. All, possibly, to be a bit more ‘modern’ and relevant to younger audiences (those under 60, but over 30?!) with attempts around it to help call attention to its legacy with bands playing in its shadow, sorry, garden at certain times.

But maybe, the preservation of those things goes against the very attitudes and approaches of the very people it so say represented (or represents)? Certainly a preserved house doesn’t actually allow it to, you know, actually be lived in by a new family so they can make new memories and be part of a community and take the house beyond it’s heritage so as to help continue moving (society) forward.

At least with a book, if borrowed, it can be returned to the library whence it came from and if owned, it can be donated so it can be useful to someone else, rather than just gather dust in a bookcase.

Small, compact and usefully transient is a book when it matters. Not like freeze-framed buildings, monuments and even trinkets that may help to tell a story and help deliver a visitor experience but just perpetuate certain historical tales (even myths) and citizens and places that don’t really deserve the attention, beyond a learning and understanding of their legacies where and when relevant.

Those folk of history with status and power and being further up the class ladder and if were still around, would, no doubt, be buying many of today’s latest things to modernise their residences and, dare it be said, likely update their curtains or just get rid of them, like their wallpaper, for some new ones or something different, probably predominately to keep hoi polloi from looking in.

Lower down the class ladder, despite residences being more compact and maybe a little more worthy of interaction, it is very likely the people living in them, if they were able to, would just move out and on if they could. As for their places of work, probably in some ways not dissimilar, even today and certainly in attitude and ethic, to places elsewhere in the world that produce certain types of goods, they are not worth preserving, just moving on and learning and adapting from.

Some things are just not worth the effort to preserve, even if the preservation aims to show and tell a legacy that should never be repeated by its contemporary viewers.

Still, it must be the paperwork.