Boxing clever…

Here’s Anne Backhouse and me in a state of controlled chaos on Tuesday at Baden Powell House, our temporary home a couple of steps off the Lawnmarket in the heart of Edinburgh. As you can see we are almost submerged by boxes and packing crates containing 120 years of papers, books, catalogues, files, etc, etc.

James & Anne moving into their new office at Baden Powell House

We moved out of the Portrait Gallery at the end of last week and are beginning to get organised but it has been a lot of work and a huge team effort.  I miss the Portrait Gallery, and particularly our great group of gallery attendants – the men and women who normally supervise the galleries. A few remain in Queen Street to look after Richie Cumming’s Rough Cut Nation, but most have been reallocated to the other National Galleries across Edinburgh.

Meanwhile Baden Powell House is our base. We are in the heart of Festival Edinburgh, with buskers, ghost tours, earnest young actors and actresses, and of course tourists all round us, often peeking in through our windows which look out across Victoria Street.