It’s warmer, especially in this bitter weather. And I like bite-sized bits of culture as well as more demanding – and often expensive – pieces. So I was looking forward to the Armenian and British exhibition at the British Library.

I learnt a number of fascinating things during this brief, less than an hour-long visit. I discovered from the display that there are two versions of the Armenian language, but there was nothing to explain how they differed or why, when, or how the two strands developed. In particular, the exhibit hinted that one might use the Roman alphabet as we do in English, whereas the other was based on the other script you see in the title. I later learned that this is not the case:

There are two standardized modern literary forms, Eastern Armenian (spoken mainly in Armenia) and Western Armenian (spoken originally mainly in modern-day Turkey and, since the Armenian genocide, mostly in the diaspora).

Wikipedia

Several displays mention Manchester both as the site of the first Armenian church in Britain – Holy Trinity, which opened its doors in 1870 – and a world-famous restaurant. The clues as to why Manchester might be such an attractive destination were scant, aside from the fact that it was bustling. But Manchester was the world’s first industrial city and was still booming in the 1870s.

Before I visited the Library, there were probably only two things I knew about Armenia and Armenians: one was the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which started in 1988 when Azerbaijan invaded the largely Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. This conflict, which started shortly after Gorbachev took over as leader of the Soviet Union, raised important questions about how the USSR under Stalin had become a prison house of nations.

Similar issues arise when we consider how to respond to Putin’s attitude to Ukraine, not only since his full-scale invasion but going back to the 2014 seizure of Crimea. I remember the discussions in 1988 being very important at the time – I must go back and reread them all these years on.

The Armenian genocide, in which probably over 1 million died, was carried out by the Ottoman Empire in 1914-15. Modern–day Turkey does not acknowledge it yet alone apologise for it.

Some writing on Armenia, including some in this exhibition, suggests that the genocide was a primary reason for Armenian migration – but this doesn’t make historical sense.

I have, in fact, spent as long writing this piece as I spent looking at the exhibition. That was its contradiction. It spurred me to find out more and revisit what I already thought. But it also frustrated me in that it would have been easily possible for the displays themselves to have given clearer information – or at least pointed one to further sources.

I was left wondering whether some well-heeled patron had sponsored this showing, which was rather impenetrable to an outsider. A bit of a shame.

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