Not read this yet, but it sounds really interesting. Between 1900 and 1950, the British state amasssed a huge collection of over 800 historic buildings, monuments and historic sites and opened them to the public. Nothing like it had ever been seen before. Men from the Ministry explains why the extraordinary collecting frenzy took place

‘It was an enterprise without precedent and – from the prehistoric monuments of the Orkneys to the great medieval coastal forts of the English Channel – it was the foundation of today’s National Heritage Collection’. To quote English Heritage:

‘Of course, rulers and governments had long assembled national collections of paintings, sculptures and books but this endeavour saw the British creating an outdoor museum of national history for the first time.