The Display of Heraldry: the heraldic imagination in arts and culture. Edited by Fiona Robertson and Peter N Lindfield. 238mm. Pp xii + 243, 97 figs mixed col and b&w. The Heraldry Society, London, 2019. isbn 9780904858044 £35 (pbk).

Abstract

cated numismatic department almost a century later in  that transformed numismatics in Britain (p ), subsequently resulting in a various massive acquisitions and the inauguration of the series of British Museum catalogues that remain the standard references and continue to inform and stimulate further study. The model of the British Museum’s Department of Coins and Medals provided Arthur Evans with an example that contributed to the formation of the Heberden Coin Room in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in . The Department of Coins and Medals in Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum was built on the same model (energetically supported by Phillip Grierson, a twentieth-century medieval scholar and coin collector who can stand comparison with the early modern figures who populate Burnett’s study). Dedicated numismatic departments within museums also contribute to the life and learning of numismatic societies, which became important in the nineteenth century, although numismatics figured largely in the meetings of the Society of Antiquaries since its foundation in . Universities, scholarly societies and museum numismatic departments provide an ideal environment for the study of coins, which can languish rapidly without such institutional support. It is hard to imagine that these meticulously researched, lavishly illustrated and beautifully produced volumes could have been possible without the help of the British Museum, where Burnett spent his professional life, and the support of the British and Royal Numismatic Societies.