Jack Ashby, from the University of Cambridge’s Museum of Zoology, unpicks world’s natural history museums in new book
A new book that goes behind the scenes of natural history museums around the world has been written by Jack Ashby, from the University of Cambridge’s Museum of Zoology.
Exploring what they tell us about our world and even how they could be crucial in protecting life on Earth, the book also studies what is chosen to go on display – and what has been left out.
Titled Nature’s Memory: Behind the Scenes at the World’s Natural History Museums, it is published by Allen Lane and was released last Thursday (24 April).
Jack, assistant director at the Museum of Zoology, has been working in natural history museums for more than two decades after reading natural sciences at Fitzwilliam College.
He says the book attempts to offer “good coverage of what natural history museums are like all across the West”.
“The first thing to say is I think they’re amazing and absolutely vital institutions for us to understand the world and our place in it,” he tells the Cambridge Independent.
“But over those 20-plus years, I’ve come to know that the way they go about representing nature doesn’t necessarily offer a clear view.
“And there are some things that I think are interesting in how museums go about talking about and displaying nature that I just wanted to unpick – and also to delve a bit more deeply into how they came together, and also how they can help save the world. So those are the three key themes of the book.”
Natural history museums consistently top the polls for the most popular tourist attraction and are typically the public’s favourite kind of museum.
London’s Natural History Museum was the second most visited museum in the UK in the past year, narrowly behind the British Museum, although some years that order is reversed.
“I’m a trustee of the Natural Sciences Collections Association, which is the UK’s national body for national history collections and the people who work with them,” says Jack.
“I’m also president of the Society for the History of Natural History, so that takes me to quite a few places – and whenever I’m anywhere with a natural history collection, I’ll certainly make a point to visit.”
Jack’s book explores the science going on behind the scenes at these museums, who collected the exhibits and asks whether they can tell us new stories for the 21st century.
“I want us to be able to think more clearly about what’s going on, what people see and what they don’t see in the galleries,” he explains.
One exhibit you can see in the Museum of Zoology is the platypus – Jack’s favourite animal.
“They are the best animal that has ever evolved, in my humble opinion,” he says.
But does he have a favourite natural history museum?
“I have two,” replies Jack. “One is called the Biologiska museet in Stockholm, in Sweden, which is impossibly old-fashioned.
“It’s a single, church-shaped wooden building, and more or less the only thing in it is one giant circular diorama that you can walk in the middle of and up through various stages of a wrought-iron staircase.
“It hasn’t been touched since the 1890s and it goes through all of the different eco-systems in Scandinavia. It is absolutely stunning…
“And the other one is the natural history museum in Paris. It has the most incredible gallery of literary thousands of skeletons, all facing the same way as you walk in the door. You can barely move without hitting something.”
The Museum of Zoology in Cambridge alone houses two million specimens.
But Jack says: “Natural history museums essentially all show the same thing, despite the fact that the collections are so vast.
“All of our museums hold well over a billion specimens, but the way that they go about showing nature tends to be the same, which I think is kind of remarkable because the collections are so varied.
“And I often get to go behind the scenes in those collections [at different museums], which is a real privilege.
“They are absolutely incredible places, when you go into a store room and you know you’re in a room with literally a million animals, and it’s possible you’re going to see something that fundamentally changed the world – or you’re going to see something that no-one else has noticed before.”
The winner of the Zoological Society of London’s award for communicating zoology, Jack’s zoological focus is the mammals of Australia, but his work broadly explores the biases influencing how nature is presented to the world, particularly through museums and their colonial legacies.
His other books include Platypus Matters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals and Animal Kingdom: A Natural History in 100 Objects.
His latest work took “about three years” to write, although the ideas within it have been developing “for many years”.
It has already been recommended by The Guardian as one of its “biggest books to look out for in 2025” and has earned coverage in The Times and The Sunday Times.
Jack will be holding an ‘in conversation’ event with Professor Rebecca Kilner, director of the University Museum of Zoology, on the evening of Tuesday, 6 May, in the main lecture theatre in the Department of Zoology, beside the museum, which is open to the general public.
Tickets are free and guests will have a chance to look around the museum after hours too. Visit museum.zoo.cam.ac.uk/events/natures-memorybehind-scenes-worlds-natural-history-museums.
