Across 2010 the British Museum engaged in the most ambitious programme of outreach it (and possibly any other museum) had ever attempted: the creation and broadcast, in partnership with the British national broadcaster the BBC, of one hundred radio programmes devoted to objects in its collection, shaped and presented its then director Neil MacGregor.
The success of the project proved to be extraordinary and beyond any predictions. This generated three more similar radio partnerships across the following decade or so, along with a range of other consequential projects: podcasts, exhibitions and, especially, publications. Here effectively a new genre of popular history and (mostly) factual surveys emerged that utilises the format and often a version of the title of A hundred objects, challenging the previously dominant formats for object-based publications of exhibition catalogues and illustrated histories.
This talk describes and reflects on this aspect and period of the British Museum’s activity from the perspective of the curator who worked on all four radio series, the only person, apart from Neil MacGregor himself, to have had a consistent role in them from start to finish.