Visits to UK museums were up again last year, and the government attributes increases to its policy of making museums free to the public. “Curiously, visits to museums that used to charge went up by only 1.7% while visits to those that had never charged shot up by 11.4%. Among the successes of the “always free” museums is the National Gallery in London, which increased visitors (after a couple of poor years) by 14% last year to 4.96m. It has moved ahead of the British Museum (4.8m) to become Britain’s most popular museum.”