In the steeplechase to become the world's longest reigning monarch of a sovereign country, Queen Elizabeth II, who celebrates her Platinum Jubilee this month, is rapidly approaching the winner's enclosure. It is now nearly seven years since she overtook Queen Victoria, who previously held the record for a British monarch, and in a little over four months she will have surpassed the reign of her contemporary King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died in 2016 after 70 years and 126 days on the throne of Thailand.

After seventy years in storage, a major European collection of plaster casts has been researched, resurrected and conserved, and is now impressively displayed in an equally excitingly refurbished site with a problematic history. Deriving in part from earlier collections, the casts were assembled in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, between 1904 and 1913.