Celebrities to Talk about British Museum Treasures for BBC Radio Series
A host of celebrities will speak about their favourite British Museum treasures in a mammoth hundred-part series for BBC Radio. A History of the World in 100 Objects will air its first episode on January 18 next year, when a century of historical items will get their 15 minutes of fame thanks to some of Britain's biggest names. The series is expected to rake in around two million listeners daily for Radio 4, with weekday slots of 9.45am, 7.45pm and 12.30am. The objects will run the gamut of human history, from two million years ago to the present day.
One of the series' headliners is broadcasting legend Sir David Attenborough, who will be eulogising a stone handaxe, fashioned by early man in the Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania millions of years ago. Neil MacGragor, director of the British Museum, says the tiny axe offers a unique insight into the minds of our ancestors. "We can't think about tools for long without thinking about the brain that made tools," he tells the Telegraph. "What kind of brain can make an object like that? Objects take us into the thought worlds of peoples and the past more directly, more subtly, than anything else." MacGragor also claims the series will better tell the stories of defeated peoples throughout history.
"Objects take us into the thoughts of the past more directly than anything else."
Also on the bill are London mayor Boris Johnson, who will be speaking about a bronze head of Augustus, the Roman emperor who ruled during the life of Christ. Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney will be reading extracts from the famous Saxon epic Beowulf, to coincide with the 1939 discovery of the Sutton Hoo ship burial. The series has only been planned up to episode 99 - with the hundredth edition saved so as to make it as up-to-date as possible.
Part of the British Museum's motive for running the shows is to better fulfil its 1753 purpose, backed by an act of Parliament, to let "studious and curious persons" both "native and foreign" to examine world history. However it will do little to quell the huge furores surrounding the Elgin Marbles and Rosetta Stone, with the arguments for keeping both in London full-time wearing increasingly thin. Who owns antiquity and whose responsibility they are is one of the heavyweight issues at Heritage Key's discussion page. Join the debate and have your say!
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