Guests to the exhibition Pirates, opening at on the Nationwide Maritime Museum at Greenwich on March 29, is perhaps stunned to identify museum staffers nodding or waving as they stroll previous a diminutive juniper tree within the flower mattress exterior. It is because the exhibition has been devoted to the reminiscence of the curator Robert J Blyth, one of many museum’s finest liked members of employees, who died unexpectedly in October, aged 54.
The phrases wit, scholarship and kindness recurred in tributes from colleagues and pals, many choking again tears, as they gathered earlier this week to look at Blyth’s ashes be scattered across the juniper, which was chosen to mark his appreciable appreciation of gin. The order of service featured his recipe for “Queen Mom’s Damage”, a cocktail which he claimed was based mostly on being despatched out to the retailers to supply gin and Dubonnet urgently earlier than a royal go to to the museum.
