'Africa'

This display is from the National Library exhibition commemorating the bicentennial of the birth of David Livingstone, the great missionary and explorer. There are lots of contemporary illustrations and even some surviving photographs - whose existence came as a surprise to me - but the most extraordinary items on display are Livingstone's personal notebook, opened to show tiny, delicate, watercolour sketches, and his hand drawn maps, in incredibly fine and precise detail, making such a vivid connection across the years with the first European to see and record so much of Africa.