‘Almost compulsory reading for anyone with a burning passion for history’
Is it really possible to tell the history of the world – warfare and empire; trade and diplomacy; religion and mythology; discovery and invention; food, entertainment and sex – through just one hundred artefacts collected from the disparate galleries and shelves of the British Museum in Bloomsbury, London? The key word is the. This is not The History of the World, if such a definitive account could ever exist. As Neil MacGregor, acknowledges himself at the very end of this incredible and beguiling book, “Other objects would have yielded different stories and taken us along different paths”. He goes as far as to suggest “The possibilities are infinite”. If you had asked me whether I agreed with that before I started reading this book, I wouldn’t have been so sure. Now, my answer would be a wholehearted ‘yes!’
Unlike most conventional histories of the world, this book does not take the Mediterranean to be its focal point and centre of gravity, with the rich and diverse cultures of the Pacific Ocean, the Americas and Africa only exploding into being upon contact with European settlers, colonisers and overlords. The final chapter alone takes us from St Petersburg to Mozambique, from the United Arab Emirates to Shenzhen. Nor does it flatter history’s pantheon of noted heroes and villains – there are no William Shakespeares and Isaac Newtons; kings and queens such as Henry VIII and Elizabeth I appear as little more than timestamps. Surprisingly, even Lenin and Hitler are not mentioned by name. This is also not a book to focus on the big, noisy events of history – there are no objects taken from either of the world wars, the French Revolution or the Moon Landings.
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