Each essay, in its own way, offers a riveting insight into a moment in history, with the object under discussion chosen more often than not because it represents or reflects some social, religious, political, or technological innovation, event, or discovery.

The objects range from a tool found in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, approximately two million years old, to the present day, with MacGregor including the Throne of Weapons, a chair made of guns, from Maputo, Mozambique, 2001 ce, and ending with the solar-powered lamp and charger manufactured in Shenzhen, Guandong, China, in 2010.

MacGregor dedicates the book to all his colleagues at the British Museum, and in his preface, appropriately headed ‘Mission Impossible’, he acknowledges what a huge group effort it has been, with BM staff working with the BBC team to make the final selection. It was important to include other voices, ranging from academic experts around the world, to representatives of global communities whose own material culture was the subject of discussion. This extension beyond the walls of the BM is a key part of MacGregor’s cultural foreign policy (so articulately set out in his closing address to the January 2009 CIHA conference, delivered in the Great Hall of the NGV): trying to negotiate a new deal with foreign countries and communities, masterpieces of whose visual culture were acquired for, and by, the BM at some point in history. One of the best aspects of MacGregor’s commentaries is his willingness to consider how objects have survived, been adapted for different purposes, or undergone changes of ownership. This book is not the place for MacGregor to debate the ethics of the BM’s retaining great works of art acquired by past generations of directors and curators in circumstances which today would spectacularly fail the BM’s own acquisition guidelines. He overall (and sensibly) avoids the issue, an obvious exception being the discussion of the Parthenon sculptures, clearly on the premise that the only repatriation issue about which the general public has the slightest interest or knowledge is the problem of the Elgin Marbles. He deals with the matter peremptorily, and moves on: ‘The Greek government insists they should be in Athens; the British Museum’s Trustees believe that in London they’re an integral part of the story of world cultures.’

The objects chosen are not necessarily the best known or most important art historically, although the selection includes star attractions such as the Rosetta Stone, the golden chariot model from the Oxus Treasure, the Chinese Admonitions Scroll, the Sutten Hoo Helmet, the Lewis Chessmen, the Easter Island Statue, and Dürer’s Rhinoceros woodcut. Some more modest items have been selected to extend the range of the commentary on different countries and civilisations, and to provide smooth linkages with other works in a particular grouping.

Warren cup, 5–15 CE, silver, 11 x 11 cm diameter, copyright the Trustees of the British Museum

Part Eighteen, ‘Exploration, Exploitation and Enlightenment ad 1680–1820’ includes the only Australian object in the 100, the wooden shield collected by Cook and Banks following an encounter with Australian Aborigines at Botany Bay on 29 April 1770.

The structure and methodology of this entry is fairly typical, beginning with the archival evidence from Cook’s and Banks’s own journal entries, describing the encounter and the fracas which ensued, and Banks’s actual reference to retrieving the shield, which subsequently came to the BM – on the Council of which Banks later served for many decades.

MacGregor then quotes generously from a commentary by Phil Gordon, Aboriginal heritage officer of the Australian museum in Sydney, on how the Indigenous population lived at the time of first contact, including Gordon’s observations on the use and shape of shields of this type. MacGregor notes that Cook’s subsequent claiming of ‘Australia’ as a British possession was unusual, his normal practice being to acknowledge the rights of the existing population, and hints that it was on the basis of his (misguided) perception that the Indigenous population was far less sophisticated than those encountered in the Pacific and other regions.

MacGregor, who knows Australia well, and is this year sponsoring a series of Australian exhibitions and programs at the BM, concludes with a heartfelt reflection on the issue of reconciliation: ‘The bark shield stands at the head of centuries of misunderstanding, deprivation and genocide. One of the big questions in Australia today remains how or indeed whether any meaningful reparation can be made. It is a process in which objects like this bark shield, held in European and Australian museums, have a small but significant part to play.’

This approach was clearly ideal for radio, and when extended to one hundred objects covering nearly two million years of human material culture, the rather ambitious title A History of the World in 100 Objects becomes credible.

The author brilliantly and methodically covers all the great issues and moments reflected in the encyclopedic collections for which he is responsible. His commentaries are notable for their attention to the human dimension: how ancient peoples lived, loved, and mated, ranging from the Ain Sakhri Lovers Figurine, a stone sculpture of c.9000 bce from Judea, near Bethlehem, representing an entwined couple – described as ‘the oldest representation of a couple having sex’ – to the explicit homoerotic vigour of the relief figures on the Warren cup, a silver vessel of c.5–15 bce found near Jerusalem, which offers the opportunity to write on attitudes to homosexuality in ancient Greece and Rome.

This huge book, which can be readily dipped into, provides a fascinating and always intelligent commentary on the British Museum’s exceptional collections. As MacGregor states quietly at the beginning: ‘it is not a bad place to start if you want to use objects to tell a history of the world.’