The desk of the writer Dr Samuel Johnson is to be returned to his former London home for the first time in more than 260 years. Except, in a strange twist, its owner is now uncertain whether it really is the desk of the famous 18th Century dictionary author. It's been suggested that despite many years of being treated as a literary relic, it could have been part of a Victorian hustle to make money.
It will be the star attraction of a new museum exhibition, but visitors will be asked whether they now believe it's authentic. Dr Samuel Johnson was an 18th Century literary giant, remembered for compiling in 1755 what was then the most comprehensive dictionary of the English language. In the TV comedy Blackadder the Third, Dr Johnson was portrayed by Robbie Coltrane, with the painstakingly-researched dictionary ending up on the fire.
What's now in dispute is the fate of the desk on which he wrote the dictionary when he was living in Gough Square, in a house which is now a museum to his memory. Since the 19th Century the wooden desk has been in Pembroke College Oxford - and the college is lending this prized possession to the Dr Johnson House museum. But when Lynda Mugglestone, professor of the history of English at the college, began to check out the provenance of the desk, there were some unexpected questions.
"The real story is that we don't quite know if it's the real desk," she says. It had come to the college through a clergyman who had been close to Dr Johnson's god daughter.
