A change of direction

Initially I was planning on basing my Unit X project around the theme of surgery, medicine and disease within Victorian Manchester, however after a trip into the city to look at the archives, this concept altered. I travelled into the city early on Monday 30th March intending to visit the city library as well as The People's History Museum (as I remembered visiting a few years ago when there was an exhibition on Victorian Death, I hoped some of the exhibit would be present in their archives, however, unfortunatly, much of the items had been donated.) After an unsuccessful visit to The People's History Museum I decided to try my luck at the City Library instead. I managed o find a few interesting books in the reference library and a couple in the lending, however nothing was really jumping out at me, I knew if I were to go down this route I wanted to look at medical illustrations. After much asking around someone directed me to a far corner on one of the top floors of the library, which housed their medical section. Whilst there were many contemporary books on disease and medical illustrations, I struggled immensely to find anything that would fit with the direction in which I had hoped to take Unit X. I was left feeling disappointed and slightly concerned that I had pick too wide and obscure a-subject matter. Just I was about to leave a beautiful mustard coloured book spine caught me eye. Housed on the opposite shelf to the anatomy section were books on zoology, botany and entomology, subject matters that I have a keen interest in. This small, fairly unassuming book was on Bees.




I knew immediately that this would be my theme for Unit X, remembering that 'the worker bee' is the symbol of Manchester. After leaving the Library I went straight to Waterstones to purchase the book.