Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum

Richard Forteyone of the worlds most gifted natural scientists and acclaimed author of Life, Trilobite and Earthdescribes this splendid new book as a museum of the mind. But it is, as well, a perfect behind-the-scenes guide to a legendary place. Within its pages, Londons Natural History Museum, a home of treasuresplants from the voyage of Captain Cook, barnacles to which Charles Darwin devoted years of study, hidden accursed jewelspulses with life and miraculous surprises. In an elegant and illuminating narrative, Fortey acquaints the reader with the extraordinary people, meticulous research and driving passions that helped to create the timeless experiences of wonder that fill the museum. And with the museums hallways and collection rooms providing a dazzling framework, Fortey offers an often eye-opening social history of the scientific accomplishments of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Forteys scholarship dances with wit. Here is a book that is utterly entertaining from its first page to its last.