James Cook: The Voyages review – eye-opening records of colliding worlds

British Library, London
Work by ill-fated illustrators aboard Captain Cook’s first journey to the Pacific sit alongside revelatory images by a Polynesian high priest in this haunting exhibition

Sydney Parkinson drew the weird animal in a clear sharp line, looking at it carefully, then looking again, erasing his mistakes until he had an image that was beautifully recognisable. He wondered what to call this creature that was so utterly unlike anything back home in Britain. He found out by speaking with local people and making a brief dictionary of their language. You can picture, from the British Library’s moving and absorbing account of a moment when worlds apart suddenly met – how they communicated by pointing at parts of their bodies: words like belly, hand, foot.

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