National Treasures/Caroline Shenton

National Treasures -Saving the Nation’s Art in World War could easily have been a dull record of logistics but Caroline Shenton’s humour, readability and depiction of colourful characters involved spares it from that fate

It was a considerable task and achievement to save the paintings of the National Gallery, the Wallace Collection, the Victoria and Albert, the Imperial War Museum and the Royal Collection and the contents of the British Museum at the outset of war.

Winston Churchill refused to let any art be sent to Canada and so it had to be relocated.

At first country mansions were used – such as the Duke of Buccleuch’s Broughton and the Rothschild’s Mentmore – but more permanent location were those of the slate mines in Wales at Manod and a quarry in Somerset.

It was no mean achievement to move the art, then to create the correct conditions of humidity in order to conserve the art properly.

It prompted some strange partnerships such as that between the debonair Kenneth Clark at the National Gallery and Ian Rawlins, an enthusiastic train spotter loner, who proved a genius at logistics.

Both the Tate Gallery and the British Museum sustained direct hits during the Blitz.

However the bulk of the nation’s art was saved and by 1945 returned to its old homes.

We should be grateful to those hardworking museum executives who did so much to preserve our art.

Caroline Shenton is a archivist and librarian, not an art historian.

There is a most helpful glossary as the cast from each museum is lengthy and could otherwise have been confusing.

There is humour too, as some of the recipients including two delightful eccentric ladies at Hellens who were less than enthusiastic about the consignment foisted on them.

The destruction of art is one of the unfortunate by products of war.

Perhaps the worst loss was the destruction of the Ovetari Chapel in Padua containing Mantegnas by Allied bombing in 1944.

Had Germany occupied Britain, undoubtedly Herman Goering would have looted our art treasures and Hitler had designs of a great museum at his home town of Linz.

Those hard working people prevented this.

Most were decorated but their service did not end in 1945 as they went onto advise on conservation for many years.

In the epilogue Caroline Shenton refers to an official report on the saving of these treasures which was rejected for being over detailed and dull.   No such criticism can be made of her book.