Dry Store Room No 1: the Secret Life of the Natural History Museum
Richard Fortey HarperPress, 348pp, £20
There was much controversy over last year’s £50m grant to the Tate towards a building in which to display more of the works stored away in its back rooms. Critics have asked if the money would be better spent elsewhere, especially in the light of recent government funding cutbacks.
Richard Fortey’s book would certainly suggest this. A former senior palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum, Fortey has written extensively about the secret treasures that lie hidden in the museum’s vaults. But this is also a history of the politics, scandals and intrigues that have shaped the institution over the centuries. It tells besides of how some of its possessions (like the bones of a giant extinct bird, or fossil imprints from ancient spiders) have contributed to modern scientific breakthroughs, through new methods of DNA testing.
Those with a limited interest in science might fear it to be – as its title suggests – rather a dry read, but it is teeming with life. Fortey’s prose is eloquent, lively, suffused with often self-deprecating humour. “In 1976 I almost burned down the Smithsonian Institution in Washington,” he recalls. “If I had succeeded I imagine I would now be one of the most famous scientists in the world.”
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