I mentioned the new British Library maps exhibition on Friday, and lead curator Tom Harper now has a post on the BL maps blog discussing it.

Welcome to Maps & the 20th century: Drawing the Line, the biggest map exhibition of the decade and the first to showcase the mapping of the ‘cartographic century’.

We have selected 200 maps from our collection of 4 million maps, supplemented by a handful of crucial loans) in order to showcase their technological development, their increasing variety, and what they meant to 20th century western  society

Viewing history through objects is an important way of unlocking our past, and maps are more eloquent than most objects in providing snapshots upon a past that may be just behind us, yet appears like a foreign country. [more here]