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Exhibitions

How a Liberal MP's inability to draw led him to invent photography

Plus: a wisely small show of Dutch flower paintings at the National Gallery and a unwisely medium-sized Sicily exhibition at the British Museum

30 April 2016

9:00 AM

30 April 2016

9:00 AM

Fox Talbot: Dawn of the Photograph

Science Museum, until 11 September

Dutch Flowers

National Gallery, until 29 August

Sicily: Culture and Conquest

British Museum, until 14 August

William Henry Fox Talbot had many accomplishments. He was Liberal MP for Chippenham; at Cambridge he won a prize for translating a passage from Macbeth into Greek verse. Over the years he published numerous articles in scholarly journals on subjects ranging from astronomy to botany. One thing he could not do, however, was draw well — and it was this inadequacy that changed the world.

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