The Secret Museum: Some Treasures Are Too Precious to Display...

This could have been so much better. Riding on the huge current interest in museums the book sets out to explore the not very surprising fact that most museums do not have all their holdings on display. It then looks at some of these 'treasures'. Unfortunately neither the book's publishers nor the author were very clear about the audience for this work. So while its content can be 'adult' eg Nabokov's collection of butterfly penises - the whole thing is written in an irritatingly child-like style which went out of fashion with Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopedia.The design of the book is appalling. Each chapter is preceded by a gushy brief intro printed in a range of fonts - a style which would embarrass a high school project. The one thing which could have lifted the book - its illustrations - are remarkably bad. Aside from their amateurishness they are reproduced in such a small size as to be pointless. ( I'm talking about the hardback here) On a Kindle they are nothing but a smudge. The captions take banality to a new low. The author seems to have a genius for the trite.The book could have done with some proof reading eg the last Great Auk in Britain was killed in either 1840 or 1813 depending which page you read.The didactic urge is strong in all of us but here it seems to be allied to a strong belief that the reader - child or adult - must be spoken down to. The writer is a researcher for the television show QI and something of that show's assumption of superiority may have rubbed off.Not a complete waste of money but close to it. I would strongly recommend a potential buyer to go to Neil MacGregor's A History of the World in 100 Objects for an example of how this sort of thing can be done well.

This is the book we use when we know we have a wait such as a doctor's appointment. We keep it in the car so that we always have something interesting to learn. The stories on each item are a page or two and we haven't found one that doesn't fascinate. The other issue is that most of these items will never be put on display so what a great way to access knowledge with these little thumbnail sketches on such a variety of objects that sit in the vaults of museums. We have also used this book for the gift that will work for almost anyone who is curious.

I bought this as a gift for a friend, based on a review. When I went to wrap it, I made the mistake of opening the cover...and two hours later still couldn't put it down. Every page has new discoveries, new information...the kind of thing you can open up anywhere and learn something amazing. Beautifully put together. Hope someone gives it to me as a gift one day soon!

I thought this would be a fantastic books to highlight treasures that regular folk (like myself) would never be allowed to see. Unfortunately, this book let me wanting more - but not in a good way. The author does go through and describe pieces, but for some of them, not having an actual picture of the object made it extremely difficult to visualize the artifact. In addition, some pieces don't really seem to be all that interesting, or at least the author was unable to draw out the significance of why that specifically chosen piece would be worth dedicating a space for. A couple of the selections seemed so uninteresting that I wouldn't go see them even if they were on display at the local museum.

I mainly bought this for our Reader's Art Book Club which reviews only books about art. Many of this area [n.M.] are 'winter birds' and travel a lot of the rest of the time. A lot of us had already visited many of these different places. I will keep it instead of putting it our museum Library, so I can see places when I travel.

An elegant, fascinating book about all the things, works of art, and very special items that don't make it into the main museum collection. Sometimes it's space issues, or selection, but sometimes the item in question is simply too delicate or too valuable to show to the sweaty public. Fun glimpse behind the scenes.

Style and contents are both terrific. A must read if you are interested in historical information.

What a fun book for the whole family to read. It has so many wonderful and interesting facts that I never heard before.Great stuff. Thanks.

I like books. Simple as that. I like e-books and my Kindle makes life easier when I'm on the move. But I like proper, old-fashioned printed books even more. And every so often, one comes along that is so beautifully produced that it could never, ever be as lovely made from pixels. Molly Oldfield's 'The Secret Museum' is one of them.It's lavishly illustrated with drawings and photos, the layout is beautiful and it stinks of quality. That extends to the content too - primarily why I bought the book, of course. It describes a fascinating cabinet of curiosities brought blinking into the light from out of the dark, secret rooms at the back and below the public areas of museums; 60 extraordinary treasures like Francis Crick's first doodle of the structure of DNA (Object 10), Livingstone's and Stanley's hats (Object(s) 30), the tools that once belonged to Queen Victoria's dentist (Object 51), and Nabokov's butterfly genitalia cabinet (No, really, it's Object 12). Every chapter shows us something that we'd otherwise never see. And every item, in some way, marks a moment in history when art or science or discovery took a step forward.This is one of the nicest books I've seen and read in a very long time. If you can afford it, get the hardcover now. While I'm sure any future paperbook or e-book edition will be quite splendid, they won't be quite as good as this edition. If, for no other reason, because this book is just about heavy enough to swat away an angry Exu (Object 29).Very probably, one of the best books I'll buy this year.

This is a book about museums. It appears to be aimed at a family audience and would probably appeal to young adults. The author is a researcher for British television program 'QI' and the book reads like a research tome for that program. It is a somewhat beautiful thing with a patina of fascination about it. The content is a little patchy but more frequently absorbing than not. The emphasis tends not to be on the secrecy, as suggested by the title, but more on the museum and context of the objects mentioned. The work scores most highly on being unique.

The idea of going behind the scenes at museums drives this excellent book. The author goes to museums at home and around the world to discover what they have hidden from public view, and really this book is the only way most of us will ever find out about these fascinating items. Some, inevitably, are less interesting, but that is because some people will be interested in certain objects, others will be more engaged by different objects. But the author gives us background and detail on each one, and it is well worth the money.

There are some very interesting stories in this book, but the formatting is a bit wierd. Each chapter has a long headline written in different type styles and sizes. Why?? And all the amazing treasures described in the book are only illustrated with a tiny Picture - 3x4 cm. Why??The book had alos been much more interesting if there had been a reason or a link between the artifacts described. They seem totally random.

I really enjoyed this. Like many others, I have never thought much about all the amazing objects that are not in the glass cases with the descriptive cards and this beautifully written and produced book redresses the balance. Molly Oldfield gives us a personal tour through some of the best of these treasures. What really stands out is the variety of the museums - and the objects themselves - both in terms of geography and in the way they span the humanities and the sciences. Finding such a range of objects so fascinating is flattering to a reader's sense of themselves as quite the polymath - when in fact, it really comes down to the author's concise, informative and entertaining style and the breadth of her understanding of the value of this hidden inheritance. Thankyou so much for this brilliant book.