The Royal Marines Museum stocks a large range of books in its gift shop and from time to time members of staff at the Museum will be reviewing books on this blog. This review is from Jim Tann on Ian Gardiner's book 'The Yompers'

‘Och no, it’s for real-get yerself back into Condor Barracks now!’

Two original musical scores have recently been donated to the Royal Marines Museum archive in the hand of the former Director of Music Lt-Colonel Vivian Dunn. One of the compositions was hitherto unknown, and was titled ‘The Amphibian’, and was specially written to commemorate the visit of Major General Houghton CBE MC to Deal in 1962. The General was Chief of Amphibious Warfare at the time, and visited the RM School of Music on the 9 March that year. It is believed this was the only occasion the piece was performed.

The Royal Marines School of Music was originally named ‘The Royal Naval School of Music’ and it was formed at Eastney Barracks (the current Royal Marines Museum location) in 1903 when the Royal Navy passed responsibility to the Royal Marines for training and providing ship’s bands. Every major British ship carried a Royal Marines Band who had a military as well as a musical role. During the First World War forty-nine musicians were killed at the Battle of Jutland alone.

On 22 July the Royal Marines School of Music will be performing at the Royal Marines Museum’s annual Band Concert.  The Museum is delighted to have the School of Music playing and in the lead up to their concert we’ll share with you some of the history of the School of Music and an insight in to the training that the students go through.

Below is an extract from Navy News. To see the full version of this feature, see the July edition of Navy News.

As we have reached the end of the 30 Anniversary of the Falklands conflict I was reminded of a very unusual item held here at the Museum, which illustrates an aspect of the career of General Sir Jeremy Moore .  Sir Jeremy was the Commander of the Land Forces which re-took the Falkland Islands; by any measure a highly regarded soldier and commander.

Sir Jeremy was best known in this role, for which he was knighted by The Queen. However prior to 1982 he had received many other awards during a long and distinguished career in the Royal Marines. Sir Jeremy had already been decorated twice with the Military Cross (MC), itself a highly unusual occurrence.

There has been a lot of media attention this year on the 30 Anniversary of the Falklands War. The Museum, as part of a series of events to mark this anniversary, has put a new display together which shows aspects of this War. We looked at our collections and tried to decide what we could show people that was completely different from our existing Falklands War display.  Our searches revealed some ordinary, yet remarkable objects – which entered the Museum as ‘Trophies of War’.  What makes them, and the display, different is that all the photographs and artefacts are Argentinean, captured by Royal Marines during the War.

Whilst we’re all in the midst of Jubilee fever and just when you’re thinking they can’t possibly make some tenuous links between the Jubilee and the Royal Marines, you are mistaken. There are of course Diamond Jubilee medals!

The museum has the Diamond Jubilee represented already in its collections; Queen Victoria’s to be exact. In Queen Victoria’s reign, there was a medal celebrating her Golden Jubilee in 1887 and in 1897 for the Diamond Jubilee you received an ‘1897’ clasp to the existing jubilee medal.

Recently we hosted a visit from Yankee Company, 45 Commando Royal Marines.  We always enjoy hosting these visits.  It reminds us about the people are who are making tomorrow’s history, today.  As always it’s a useful chance to make contacts, exchange information, and collect objects.

On Thursday 7 June Chris Terrill will be at the Royal Marines Museum at ‘Destination Afghanistan’, the hands-on family fun day, speaking about his experiences filming  the documentary ‘Royal Marines: Mission Afghanistan’ a program which saw him embed with Lima Company of the Royal Marines in 2011 for a six-month deployment in Helmand Province in Afghanistan.

People generally see Museums as sources of accurate, authoritative information.  They often regard them as sources of knowledge and expertise.  When we collect objects for our collection, or re-visit things we already have, we try and record as much as we possibly can about them.  When they’re put on display, we use some or all of this information in putting displays together.

On 23 May 1982, HMS Antelope was bombed in San Carlos Bay by Argentine Skyhawk aircraft. The bombs failed to detonate on impact. Whilst being defused one of the bombs exploded and started a major fire. The call for abandon ship was given, and the crew were evacuated. Soon after, the ship’s ammunition exploded and HMS Antelope sank on 24 May 1982.

Our new exhibition ‘Commando Mind’ showcases stories of incredible challenges that Royal Marines faced and successfully surmounted, in non combat situations. With little more than the working title of ‘spirit’ we set about creating the exhibition…

First of all, the project team did some brain storming. We tried to nail down the attributes of the Commando mind, and to work out the different types of challenges that Royal Marines have faced. When we’d brainstormed lots of different ideas, we set about trying to think of contemporary Royal Marines stories that embodied the mindset and different types of challenges.

In early 2009 the Museum purchased a First World War medal group.  The group was unremarkable in itself; it comprised of three campaign medals popularly known as ‘Pip, Squeak and Wilfred’.  These were issued in very large numbers.  So why did we buy them?

Final blog from our guest blogger Petty Officer Hamish Burke whose photography is featured in our new exhibition ‘Shoulder2Shoulder’.

I joined A Company 1 RIFLES to deploy on Operation OMID HAFT on the 23 May 2011. A day I will never forget. I was at Patrol Base 4 (PB4) and had just returned from an operation with C Company and was preparing for an operation with A Company I RIFLES.  As darkness fell we were checking our kit, ammunition, and cleaning weapons, it was a quiet, calm night.  It hadn’t been dark for long when suddenly the lads and myself were called together into the centre of the camp.

Following the success of the recent ‘More Than a Name’ exhibition, the Museum hosted a TV shoot of a forthcoming series called ‘Hero in the Family’. The subject was Marine John Rippon, the late father of broadcaster Angela Rippon, who came to the Museum to meet Matt Little, our Archivist, to go through the papers, photographs and medals in her possession.