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From The Archives

A paradise of postcards

19 October 2019

9:00 AM

19 October 2019

9:00 AM

From The Spectator, 15 July 1922:
 
It is true that things so small as postcards cannot give one the splendour and glory of a great statue or a great canvas; but, all the same, their smallness is one of their virtues. A man fond of such things, riding across the Syrian Desert, on the camel tracks in the Sudan, or in Mesopotamia, or making some journey in West or East Africa, in Rhodesia, or on the North-West Frontier of India, or wherever there are wastes to pass and duties to be done, might easily thrust two or three of these little packets into his pocket or his saddle-bags. Then, at some lonely camping ground in tropical woods, in ‘deserts where the snows are,’ or in canoes or boats launched on some vast wastes of grey water in ocean-like lakes, he might invoke the divine consolation of the figurative arts through these tiny reflections of the great collections.

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