Left Without Official Absence

Although George Osborne's British Museum remains the most notorious example of Bullingdon book-keeping at work, it appears that several other treasure-houses of the national heritage have manifested a similar degree of Britishness in caring for their collections. Forty-five items belonging to the National Portrait Gallery are "not located," although they are also neither missing nor stolen; it remains as yet unclear whether one of them is an image of Schrödinger. The Victoria and Albert Museum is unable to account for a hundred and eighty artefacts, and does not know whether they are lost or stolen. The National History Museum has lost a hundred and eighty fish, besides sundry saurian segments; but said that most of the bits and pieces were quite small really. In a tribute to British military prowess, the Imperial War Museum has lost more than five hundred and fifty items, with the excuse that they "date from many years or even decades ago." It certainly seems well beyond the bounds of reasonable expectability for a museum to be capable of looking after anything old.