Dated: 18/01/2010

Viking treasure features in BBC's History of the World

Treasures from the Yorkshire Museum take pride of place in a prestigious new BBC series called A History of the World in 100 Objects, which starts today at 7.45pm (18 January).

The BBC Radio 4 series is a joint venture with the British Museum and is written and narrated by the museum’s director, Neil MacGregor.

The Vale of York Viking Hoard, currently on display at the British Museum, has been chosen as one of the key 100 objects. It includes 600 coins, complete ornaments, ingots (bars), and chopped-up fragments known as hack silver, and was discovered in North Yorkshire in January 2007 by two metal detectorists, Dave and Andrew Whelan.

The Hoard will return to its home at the Yorkshire Museum in time for the museum’s re-opening on 1 August, 2010, following a nine-month refurbishment project.

Tonight’s Inside Out at 7.30pm on BBC1 will also include a feature about the Hoard as part of the A History of the World partnership and an interview with the Yorkshire Museum’s Curator of Archaeology, Andrew Morrison.

He said: “We’re thrilled to be part of the History of the World project, which is the latest in a series of close partnership projects between the Yorkshire Museum and the British Museum. We hope visitors will come and see the Hoard for themselves when it returns to Yorkshire in August when the museum re-opens with an exciting new look.”

The partnership between the BBC and the British Museum is also being supported by regional radio programmes highlighting key objects telling the history of the world from each area of Britain.

In North Yorkshire, BBC Radio York will be featuring ten objects, most of which are from the Yorkshire Museum and its sister museum, York Castle Museum. Their series starts on Sunday, 24 January, as part of The Sunday Brunch programme from 10am – 2pm.

These include a Roman sculpture of the head of Emperor Constantine, the medieval Middleham Jewel, discovered close to Middleham Castle, and a tin of Rowntree’s cocoa taken to the South Pole by Ernest Shackleton.

Find out much more about A History of the World at www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld This fascinating website, where you can search for objects from across the series, also has details of how you can add your own objects and of a CBBC children’s programme called Relic: Guardians of the Museum.

To discover more about the ten objects from North Yorkshire, visit http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/york/hi/

For more press information, please contact Hannah Boulton at the British Museum press office, on 020 7323 8522, or hboulton@britishmuseum.org