Sir, Passing the British Museum last Thursday, I decided to pop in during normal opening hours. What an awful shock. Tickets for the Hadrian exhibition had sold out, and when I tried to visit the Reading Room it was shut — because the Hadrian exhibition was in there. When I asked when the Reading Room would be open again I was told perhaps in 2012.

It turns out that this famous iconic heart of the British Museum, recently restored at public expense, has been hidden and refitted as exhibition space. Why? Because so much exhibition space has been handed over to shops and cafés.

I decided to visit the basement galleries of Greek and Roman scultpture. They were closed. I’ve been trying to visit these galleries for ten years or more. They are always closed. I also noticed that the huge main staircase off the entrance hall was also closed for no reason that anyone could explain. I suspect it was to force everyone into the Great Court and more shops.

The British Museum is one of the top two or three tourist attractions in the country and most people there did seem to be from abroad. The experience was of a messy, crowded shopping arcade with some galleries and cafés attached. I can think of no greater advertisement for the educational incompetence and utter philistinism of the current British State. Who manages this horrid shambles of a museum these days?

Duncan Fallowell

London W11

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