In 1898, a 19-year-old girl marched into the Natural History Museum and demanded a job. At the time, no women were employed there as scientists, but for the determined Dorothea Bate this was the first step in an extraordinary career as a pioneering explorer and fossil-hunter and the beginning of an association with the Museum that was to last for more than 50 years. As a young woman in the early 1900s she explored the islands of Cyprus, Crete and the little known Majorca and Menorca, braving parental opposition and considerable physical hardship and danger. In remote mountain caves and sea-battered cliffs, she discovered, against enormous odds, the fossil evidence of unique species of extinct fauna, previously unknown to science, including dwarf elephants and hippos, giant dormice and a strange small goat-like antelope. Thirty years later in Bethlehem, she excavated against a backdrop of violence and under the shadow of war. By the end of her life Dorothea had earned an international reputation as an expert in her field. 'Discovering Dorothea' captures the indomitable spirit of a woman who, against social pressure and in the face of physical hardship, devoted her life to discovery and deepened our knowledge of the natural world.

In autumn 1914, as Europe's military `doomsday machine' creaks into gear, the war effort at the Natural History Museum is about to spring into life. The grounds become an ad hoc military barracks, first aid units are formed and staff from across the institutions of `Albertopolis' are marshalled into the Volunteer Corps for Home Defence (Museum section). During the coming years many Government departments turn to the Museum for its scientific expertise and innovation. The knowledge held within the Museum becomes a vital repository for the military, on everything from equine anatomy to moth damage on the air balloons of the Royal Naval Air Service. In A Museum at War, historian and journalist Karolyn Shindler presents a series of compelling snapshots of life at the Museum during the Great War and demonstrates how deeply it affected the people working there. She reveals not only how the four years of war fundamentally altered all aspects of Museum life but also how the Museum itself made an important contribution to Britain's war effort.