Entrusted with Arms
Sue Corbett takes a look at the reality of The Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds.
It is one thing to ensure the accuracy of labels on traditional museum display cases, but when a museum also chooses to explain its exhibits by means of jousting, archery, hunting and falconry displays, specially made short films and computer interactive battle games, the opportunities for error I seem greatly enhanced.
The Royal Armouries Museum, which has just opened in the centre of Leeds, is just such a case. The £4.25 million project, which was initiated in 1991 with building beginning in January 1994, has been purpose built by the architects Derek Walker Associates. Only time will tell how accurate its interpretations are, but the auguries seem good. John Waller, its director of live interpretation, is a stickler for accuracy. An experienced jouster, archer, falconer and stage-fight director (he choreographed the fencing scene in the BBC's recent dramatisation of Pride and Prejudice); he works, he says, to the precept: 'Realism first, theatricality second'.
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