Curiosities from the Cabinet: Objects and Voices from Britain's Museums

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. We hear over 40 people from inside and outside the museum world – curators, conservators, visitors, users, artists – talking about these objects with knowledge, passion and even tenderness.

Interviewees include British Museum Assyriologist Irving Finkel explaining the oldest known map of the world; David Kohn of the American Museum of Natural History describing how Darwin's weed garden contributed to On the Origin of Species; and novelist and ‘Janeite’ Cindy Jones spinning her own story around Jane Austen’s writing table. This book will inform and intrigue anyone who likes visiting museums.