and Sophie Dahl to the fish curators at the Natural History Museum. And like the very best mornings spent at a museum it promises to be idiosyncratic, surprising and enormously good fun. Each Friday, join Molly Oldfield, write of the weekly kids quiz in the Guardian each. The Secret Museum reveals sixty unknown artefacts and stories from all five continents, from Rome to Rio and Boston to Berlin. Rich in atmosphere and anecdote, suffused with the surprising emotion of a personal discovery, but grounded in fascinating factual detail, this is a unique and beautifully illustrated book. This and many other extraordinary inventions, legacies, discoveries and artefacts have been visited and curated by Molly Oldfield into a Secret Museum. Under the streets of Manhattan priceless books are shelved brick outbuildings in London's East End house drawers of Victorian embroidery remembering foundlings long ago dead body bags in Washington clothe space suits covered in real moon dust and in an unvisited aircraft hangar sits Auguste Piccard's extraordinary invention, the balloon gondola… It sits in the quiet dark of an archive waiting for a treasure hunter or obsessive researcher to root out its very existence. Most of a museum's collection never gets seen. Who knows what's hidden from view? Locked away in cabinets, secure storage and aircraft hangars.

The Secret Museum is a unique treasure trove of the most intriguing artifacts hidden away in museum archives from all over the world - curated, brought to light, and brought to life by Molly Oldfield in a beautifully illustrated collection.

The Secret Museum by Molly Oldfield