As the name would suggest, this book tells the story of the Royal Observatory Greenwich – from its foundation to its departure from Greenwich – in a series of one hundred objects. Devoy follows the tried and tested format of Neil MacGregor’s History of the World in 100 Objects (2010), using objects to shape, illustrate and simplify complex historical stories. This book is an excellent example of this genre. Devoy’s book is more than the story of an institution and its objects; it is many stories of the people living and working at the observatory over its 350-year history. These are stories Devoy is well placed to tell; as curator at the observatory she has been researching these collections for over a decade. The story of the Royal Observatory is told in chronological order, with sections divided according to the career of each Astronomer Royal, interspersed with themed essays. The objects are not equally distributed between Astronomers Royal but weighted according to their length of service and significance. The largest section is given over to George Biddell Airy, the longest-serving and arguably the most influential of the Astronomers Royal. Nathaniel Bliss, who served for only two years, gets no objects at all. Through these carefully chosen objects, each with its own photograph and biography, the text tells the story of an observatory with an ever-changing purpose. Between 1675 and 1948, Greenwich evolved from a government resource, the primary value of which was collecting data useful for navigation, into an institution similar to a university-run-research institute – so similar, in fact, that it eventually (in 1998) rendered itself obsolete.

In Devoy’s exploration of these objects, one finds the traditional tale of the quest for longitude and the standardization of time, as told through conventional highlights such as the Harrison chronometers and Airy transit circle. But there are also many other stories concerning the work and lives of the assistants, computers, wives, daughters, household staff and instrument makers – all of whom contributed to the day-to-day running of the observatory. Many of these stories are told through the less well-known pieces. Portraits, sketches, photographs and costumes are used to introduce Maskelyne’s and Airy’s families and their lives at the observatory. Smaller pieces of working materials – a longitude calculation sheet (object 23), a globe (object 22), a hole punch (object 42) and a spider fork (object 79), for example – help flesh out the experiences of the computers and assistants working from home or on site. In this way, the observatory is shown to be both a domestic and a scientific space. These object biographies show how the observatory gradually changed alongside the shifting preoccupations of each Astronomer Royal.

Interspersed between the object stories are short essays that help inform the story by contextualizing key aspects of the observatory’s history. Some discuss well-known projects long associated with the observatory’s history, such as the Carte du Ciel project or the Transit of Venus expeditions. Others, such as the story of cable production in Greenwich or the Observatory’s sports and social clubs, offer a more rounded view of the observatory.

This book follows several previous histories of the Royal Observatory published to coincide with important dates. On the observatory’s three-hundredth anniversary a still much-consulted three-volume history, The Greenwich Observatory (1975) was published by historians of science Eric Forbes, Jack Meadows and Derek Howse, the latter of whom then served as curator of astronomy at the Royal Observatory. When the working observatory, the Royal Observatory Greenwich, was closed, The Old Royal Observatory: A Guide to the Collections (1998) was published, celebrating a selection of conventional highlights from the collections. Many of these are included in Devoy’s volume. Various books on the observatory have focused on the longitude story, from Dava Sobel’s Longitude (1995) to the more recent Ships, Clocks and Stars by Richard Dunn and Rebekah Higgitt (2014). This book is different. Devoy’s book is broader in scope, just as was the working observatory, especially in its later years. What makes this book a joy is the effortless way in which it uses the collections (and some objects from outside the observatory’s collections) to tell broad, rich, interwoven stories that combine to reveal the observatory as an institution evolving to try to meet the changing needs of government, commerce and astronomy over time.

This is an excellent and thoroughly researched volume and builds nicely on Devoy’s previous publications, including work on object biographies and her short history of the Greenwich meridian (On the Line, 2019). Her experience writing for both academics and the general public shows in the prose, which is both detailed and accessible.

The book is published by the Royal Observatory Greenwich, which suggests that its primary intended audience is visitors to the observatory. However, it would also make an excellent introduction to students and scholars interested in the observatory’s history, in using objects to tell history and in how to use objects to include and recentre marginalized historical actors. It is in this final use that the text really stands out. By analysing paperwork, sketches, object accessories and costume, Devoy seamlessly incorporates a multitude of actors traditionally seen as difficult to retrace through lack of evidence – with admirable results.