‘The new blockbuster by the museums maestro Neil MacGregor … The man who chronicles world history through objects is back … examining a new set of objects to explore the theme of faith in society’ Sunday Times

In this major new BBC radio series, Neil MacGregor investigates the role and expression of shared beliefs through time and around the world.

Using specially selected objects from the British Museum and beyond, talking to experts from various disciplines and visiting key locations from the river Ganges to Jerusalem, he examines how rituals and systems of belief have shaped our societies. Looking at communities from the distant past to the present day, both in Europe and worldwide, his focus moves from the beginnings of belief and the elemental worship of fire, water and the sun, through festivals, pilgrimages and sacrifices, to power struggles and political battles between faiths and states.

Among the objects featured are the Lion Man, a small ivory sculpture which is about 40,000 years old; a 16th century ivory and gold qibla, used to find the direction of Mecca; and the Lampedusa Cross, made from pieces of a refugee boat wrecked off the Italian coast in 2013.

Produced by BBC Radio 4 in partnership with the British Museum, this enlightening series explores humanity’s enduring need to believe, belong and connect with the cosmos.

Duration: 6 hours 50 mins.

Neil MacGregor argues that uniquely for any European country, no coherent, over-arching narrative of Germany’s history can be constructed, for in Germany both geography and history have always been unstable. Its frontiers have constantly floated. Königsberg, home to the greatest German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, is now Kaliningrad, Russia; Strasbourg, in whose cathedral Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany’s greatest writer, discovered the distinctiveness of his country’s art and history, now lies within the borders of France. For most of the five hundred years covered by this book Germany has been composed of many separate political units, each with a distinct history. And any comfortable national story Germans might have told themselves before 1914 was destroyed by the events of the following thirty years.

German history may be inherently fragmented, but it contains a large number of widely shared memories, awarenesses and experiences; examining some of these is the purpose of this book. Beginning with the fifteenth-century invention of modern printing by Gutenberg, MacGregor chooses objects and ideas, people and places which still resonate in the new Germany – porcelain from Dresden and rubble from its ruins, Bauhaus design and the German sausage, the crown of Charlemagne and the gates of Buchenwald – to show us something of its collective imagination. There has never been a book about Germany quite like it.

Encompassing a grand sweep of human history, A History of the World in 100 Objects begins with one of the earliest surviving objects made by human hands, a chopping tool from the Olduvai gorge in Africa, and ends with objects which characterise the world we live in today.

Seen through MacGregor’s eyes, history is a kaleidoscope – shifting, interconnected, constantly surprising, and shaping our world today in ways that most of us have never imagined. A stone pillar tells us about a great Indian emperor preaching tolerance to his people; Spanish pieces of eight tell us about the beginning of a global currency; and an early Victorian tea-set speaks to us about the impact of empire.

An intellectual and visual feast, this is one of the most engrossing and unusual history books published in years.

‘Brilliant, engagingly written, deeply researched’ Mary Beard, Guardian

‘A triumph: hugely popular, and rightly lauded as one of the most effective and intellectually ambitious initiatives in the making of ‘public history’ for many decades’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Highly intelligent, delightfully written and utterly absorbing ‘ Timothy Clifford, Spectator

‘This is a story book, vivid and witty, shining with insights, connections, shocks and delights’ Gillian Reynolds Daily Telegraph