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 Darwin's 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.