Curiosities from the Cabinet

Curiosities from the Cabinet features 36 museum objects including an ancient Babylonian tablet, a 21st-century webpage, a skeleton marionette and a colony of live ants, found in UK museums from Weston-super-Mare to the Shetland Islands. Over 40 people from inside and outside the museum world curators, conservators, visitors, users, artists talk about these objects with knowledge, passion and even tenderness.We listen as British Museum Assyriologist Irving Finkel explains the oldest known map of the world; David Kohn of the American Museum of Natural History describes how Darwins weed garden contributed to On the Origin of Species; and novelist and ';Janeite' Cindy Jones spins her own story around Jane Austen's writing table. This book will inform and intrigue anyone who likes visiting museums.