The British Public and the British Museum

This book is a timely intervention in the history of museums in Britain. BP's ongoing sponsorship of the British Museum, the appointment of George Osborne as a trustee, and the Museum's continued resistance to the repatriation of holdings such as the Parthenon Marbles and the Benin Bronzes have brought questions of the Museum's funding, leadership, and right to the objects in its collection to increased public attention.

The British Public and the British Museum reveals this is not a recent 'woke' agenda but rather part of a long history of public resistance and activism enacted through the British Museum. It presents a cultural history of the nineteenth-century British Museum, departing from traditional institutional histories by centring public perception of the museum's purpose and its uses in society.