Collecting the World

Hans Sloane, co-founder of the British Museum, is the subject of this enjoyably written and beautifully illustrated biography. Sloane collected objects with a near-maniacal passion. Among the global oddities he snaffled were “a cyclops pig, having only one eye in the middle of the forehead” and “a long worm drawn by piece meal from a negros legg” [sic]. It’s just a shame that Delbourgo occasionally uses the standards of the present to upbraid the past. Noel Malcolm