Unlike the British Empire, the sun never truly seems to set on the Silk Road. It doesn’t matter how often that path is travelled, romance is always around the corner. Somehow it’s a different matter when President Xi Jinping puts on his hard hat and gets digging for the press on his Belt and Road Initiative. Silk still flows out of China and the West still sends its least affordable luxuries eastwards.
The British Museum has managed to add some of that commercial grit to the undulating sands of time. "Silk Roads" is dramatic in places and globalised throughout. The curators have even managed to squeeze in the wastes of northern Europe alongside the wastes of Central Asia.
