Horniman Museum and Gardens

This guide to the Horniman Museum and Gardens begins with an overstuffed walrus, taxidermied in the 1880s by someone who had never seen a live one. It follows Frederick Horniman, heir to a tea trading empire, who collected thirty thousand objects on his travels and eventually gave them all to the public. Listen for how the walrus ended up here, bought from an 1886 exhibition, long before the museum itself existed. Stand close to compare its impossibly smooth skin with what a real walrus looks like.