Polar Museum transformed

The last letters of Captain Scott and his companions will return to public display as one of the world's most important collections of polar artefacts is officially opened by TRH The Earl and Countess of Wessex on June 8. The Museum will reopen to the public on June 9. The Polar Museum at Cambridge University's Scott Polar Research Institute - which also holds the expedition diaries of Sir Ernest Shackleton and the photographic records of Herbert Ponting - has undergone a dramatic two-year transformation as part of a £1.75m redevelopment made possible by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Among evocative items on display for the very first time are the Terra Nova journals of Henry Robertson Bowers (pictured), Shackleton's tea service, presented to him by the citizens of New York after his Nimrod expedition, and the UK's first full-scale exhibition of Inuit Art. The Museum, which last year began posting Captain Scott's diary on Twitter, opens to the public in time for the centenary of his departure from Britain on the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition. Its reopening is the start of a two-year period of commemorations marking Scott's achievements in the Antarctic. All events can be found at www.scott100.org.