Helping preserve Birmingham’s heritage has helped Malcolm Brian Jones – known as Brian – write his own bit of history as he is made an MBE in the Queen's birthday honours.
Mr Jones has devoted a large part of his adult life to chronicling local history in Birmingham and establishing the popular Pen Room museum in the Jewellery Quarter.
During the process of researching and writing local history books, he developed a passionate interest in the pioneering efforts of city workers in the manufacture of steel pen nibs in the 19th and early 20th centuries, which played a crucial role in increasing literacy around the world.
Mr Jones’ interest in history developed after he retired from the Birmingham Royal Institution for the Blind, in Harborne, where he was Director of Vision Services. He became one of the driving forces behind the Birmingham Pen Trade Heritage Association, formed in 1996 and registered as a charity in 1997.
The association opened the volunteer-run Pen Room museum in Frederick Street, in the Jewellery Quarter, in 2001 and a learning centre was established in an adjoining unit the following year. It now attracts up to 10,000 people a year from as far afield as China and the United States.
“I’m delighted and honoured to receive the MBE. But I should stress I think it recognises not just my efforts but the work of dozens of volunteers without whom the Pen Room would never have opened,” said the 71 year-old, who lives in Walmley, Sutton Coldfield.
“We felt the world-beating efforts of Birmingham workers in the manufacture of the steel pen nib was a fascinating and important story – one people of all ages from this city and, indeed, around the globe would find interesting.”
