In the days of the British Empire, things were taken that probably shouldn’t have been. So how come they’re still in museums, galleries and some much stranger places?
There are eight million objects in the British Museum alone. A number of them were stolen in wildly dodgy ways – a very big number. A chance encounter with one of them (a mechanical tiger/music box that mauls a soldier when you turn a handle) prompted journalist Marc Fennell to ask- ‘What is that? And how the hell did it get here?’
The answer was so gloriously weird that it sent Fennell on a globetrotting adventure, investigating the most audacious criminal enterprise in history – the British Empire.
With wit, empathy and unflinching honesty, Stuff the British Stole reveals the true stories behind remarkable objects in the world’s most celebrated museums. These artifacts tell the stories of power, resistance and survival that have shaped our modern world.
Travelling from the pyramids of Egypt to the beaches where Captain Cook first landed, from Tuscan marble quarries to Kenyan torture chambers, Fennell uncovers the uncomfortable truths hidden behind the plaques. The human stories museums would rather we didn’t talk about.
Part travelogue, part true crime, part reckoning with history, this is a book about how the hell we got here.