Britain can break it (From The Oxford Times)

Britain can break it

6:50am Thursday 18th March 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

Sir – As a pendant to the account of the formal opening of the New Bodleian Library by King George VI, (Feature, March 4) my father, who became Bodley’s librarian in 1948, recorded in his memoirs that after the key broke “the situation was only saved by the Bedel of Arts whose normal duties are confined to carrying the University Mace before the vice chancellor in procession.

“He now abandoned his mace and, seizing the broken shaft in a grip of iron, managed to turn it far enough to open the door.

“The King afterwards returned his end of the key to the librarian with a letter in his own autograph and this, with the broken key, remained for many years one of the most popular exhibits in the library’s Exhibition Room”.

In an impromptu aside only audible to those nearest to him, the King was heard to murmur: “Britain can break it”, thus brilliantly parodying the slogan “Britain can make it” which had been the motto of the recent Wembley Exhibition held to advertise the whole range of post-war manufacturing industry.

Rear Admiral JAL Myres, Dorchester-on-Thames