Foreward / Nicholas Serota
Preface / Maggie Fergusson
There's life in these walls, The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, New York / Roddy Doyle
Rodin's sonnets in stone, Musée Rodin, Paris / Allison Pearson
Cool under fire, The National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul / Rory Stewart
Cabinets of wonder, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford / Frank Cottrell-Boyce
Painting in stone, Museo Dell'Opificio Delle Pietre Dure, Florence / Margaret Drabble
Sanctum in the city, The Frick Collection, New York / Don Paterson
The wings of Capri, Villa San Michele, Capri / Ali Smith
Spurned no longer, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne / Tim Winton
The pity of war, In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres / Michael Morpurgo
Love bade me welcome, The Harvard Museum of Natural History, Cambridge, MA / Ann Patchett
A plaster cast in Copenhagen, Thorvaldsensmuseum, Copenhagen / Alan Hollinghurst
Palais of the dolls, Musée de la Poupée, Paris / Jacqueline Wilson
The Odessaphiles, Odessa State Literary Museum, Odessa / A. D. Miller
A smiling shrunken goddess, Corinium Museum, Cirencester / Alice Oswalk
Sons and mothers, Ensorhuis, Ostend / John Burnside
A home from home, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston / Claire Messud
Where Sibelius fell silent, Ainola, Järvenpää / Julian Barnes
Wordsworth's continuous force, Dove Cottage, Grasmere / Ann Wroe
Agony to ecstasy, The Prado, Madrid / John Lanchester
The museum of heartbreak, The Museum of Broken Relationships, Zagreb / Aminatta Forna
The quiet theatres, The Sir John Ritblat Treasures Gallery, London / Andrew Motion
A debt to Rudolph Leopold, Leopold Museum, Vienna / William Boyd
Thank you for the music, ABBA: The Museum, Stockholm / Matthew Sweet
Glasgow's palace of dreams, Kelvingrove, Glasgow / Andrew O'Hagan