A History Of The World: Telling the story of London

Choosing 10 objects to illustrate London's history has been no easy task, writes the Horniman Museum's Finbarr Whooley.
"Museum objects have a very special relationship with our visitors, often they associate a particular display with a moment in their lives - a childhood visit for example or a blind date at the local gallery.
Occasionally they will have strong views about a change in the display or a new interpretation being placed on a treasured object.
At the Horniman I have a particular memory of being berated by a man who objected to us taking off display some 20 years previously a tapeworm to which he had been much attached during visits to the museum in the 1960s. Choosing 10 objects for London's history of the world programme was not an easy task.
Between us the four museums in the London Hub; the Museum of London, the Horniman, the London Transport Museum and the Geffrye, hold many thousands of objects that have been collected over the years in order to introduce Londoners to their own history and to their place in the world.
The final choice is an eclectic one which demonstrates just how varied the collections of the capital's museums are.

Unique perspectives

They are not necessarily our finest objects, some are already very popular with our visitors, and some are chosen because they can tell a fascinating story that is not generally very well known.
Nearly 1.5 million visitors come to see these objects in our four museums each year.
Often we receive letters or emails from visitors whose visit has triggered off memories or some display has stimulated discussion or debate; sometimes our visitors disagree with our curators descriptions of the objects on display.
The History Of The World programme allows us to capture these unique perspectives in a new and exciting way.
We hope that these initial 10 objects will whet people's appetites, stimulate interest and get people to begin to put their own treasured (or hated) objects on display.
Ultimately, we hope that the results will be as stimulating, diverse, strange and unpredictable as London itself."


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