page_title: D. H. Turner
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: D. H. Turner / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Gorleston Psalter (British Library Add Ms. 49622). From the BL website: "f. 8r: Historiated initial 'B'(eatus) of the Tree of Jesse, with marginal scenes of a hunt and David and Goliath" BEATUS VIR QUI non abiit in consilio impiorum &amp; in via peccatorum non stetit &amp; in cathedra pestilentie non sedit. Sed in lege domini voluntas eius &amp; in lege eius meditabitur die ac nocte.
context_page_description: Derek Howard Turner was an English museum curator and art historian who specialised in liturgical studies and illuminated manuscripts. He worked at the British Museum and the British Library from 1956 until his death, focusing on exhibitions, scholarship, and loans.
  Following several years spent working at a hospital and living at an Anglican Benedictine abbey, Turner found employment in the British Museum's Department of Manuscripts at the age of 25. Serving first as assistant keeper, and later as deputy keeper, within two years of his hiring he helped the museum select manuscripts for purchase from the Dyson Perrins collection and organised his first exhibition; in the 1960s he also took teaching posts at the universities of Cambridge and East Anglia.
  Turner moved to the British Library when custodianship of the museum's library elements changed in 1973. At the library he helped oversee several major exhibitions, and organise the international loans of significant documents.
context_section_description: Turner worked at the British Museum from 1956 until 1973, and at the British Library from 1973 until his 1985 death, the move occasioned only by the deaccession of the museum's library elements in favour of the new institution. From assistant keeper he rose to deputy keeper. He focused on medieval liturgical studies and illuminated manuscripts, overseeing their exhibition, acquisition, and loans. Particularly while an assistant keeper he also focused on scholarship, seeing many articles published and teaching part-time at the Universities of Cambridge and East Anglia.
caption: The Tree of Jesse in the Gorleston Psalter, which Turner helped the British Museum acquire
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