In the original dustsheet. Blue cloth binding with silver title on the spine.

• F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

Egyptian mummies, Michaelangelo’s drawings, sculptures from Greece and Rome, exquisite porcelain from China, bronze masterpieces from Africa, the remarkable finds from Sutton Hoo – these are just some of the awe-inspiring objects in the British Museum’s famous collections. But the Museum is more than just a treasure house: it is a London landmark, a tourist magnet, a national and international resource- a museum of the world for the world. Keeping this remarkable institution running is a team of 1000 staff who supervise the galleries, plan major exhibitions and manage a flow of nearly 5 million visitors a year. Rupert Smith has been granted special access to the huge variety of people who work in the Museum, including expert curators, conservators, heavy-object handlers and the people who clean the fabulous new glass roof of the Great Court. Accompanying a major ten-part BBC television series, The Museum takes us behind the scenes for the first time to see how this amazing place works. Illustrated with over 120 colour photographs, and with a foreword by the Museum’s director, Neil MacGregor, this fascinating book is a celebration of the British Museum and the many dedicated people who work there.

The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. The British Museum was the first public national museum to cover all fields of knowledge.

In 2022 the museum received 4,097,253 visitors, an increase of 209 per cent from 2021. It ranked third in the list of most-visited art museums in the world.

The museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the Anglo-Irish physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. It first opened to the public in 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building. The museum’s expansion over the following 250 years was largely a result of British colonisation and resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, or independent spin-offs, the first being the Natural History Museum in 1881. The right to ownership of some of its most well-known acquisitions, notably the Greek Elgin Marbles and the Egyptian Rosetta Stone, is subject to long-term disputes and repatriation claims.

In 1973, the British Library Act 1972 detached the library department from the British Museum, but it continued to host the now separated British Library in the same Reading Room and building as the museum until 1997. The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and as with all national museums in the UK it charges no admission fee, except for loan exhibitions.