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What is, or was, A history of the world in 100 objects? This may seem a strange opening question, as reviewers generally set out with at least a clear idea of what they have been asked to review. Usually in academic history publishing it is a book, and most often it is also one that the reviewer would rather like to own. However, the core of the History of the world project was a radio programme - at least, this was how it was principally billed during 2010 - and this is what I was initially asked to review: a year-long series of 100 fifteen-minute programmes, to be broadcast throughout 2010 on BBC Radio 4. A history of the world in 100 objects was intended to tell a narrative world history, from prehistory to the present, through 100 objects chosen from among the collections of the British Museum. Academic reviews in history rarely venture beyond traditional printed outputs and I was immediately intrigued by this project and the opportunity to review it.
But A history of the world turned out to be far more than just a radio programme. It was conceived from the start as a project that would operate across different media: in media terminology A history of the world is 'multi-platform programming'. Alongside the core radio programmes and the website, which also carried the programme podcasts, the project also had a strong participatory dimension. It was associated with a 'nationwide distributed programme of activity working with partner museums across the UK'1 and provided an online resource where partner museums and the public uploaded and commented upon their own objects. As Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, said, 'Thanks to the incomparable reach of the BBC - radio, television, World Service and web - as the series develops, everybody across the UK and across the world will be able to participate, using not just the things in museums, but their own objects as well, to tell their history of the world.'2 A constellation of tie-ins with regional TV and radio extended the world history agenda to every corner of the country; there was even a linked children's programme on CBBC and...