Fans of Inspector Morse know the Alfred Jewel as the priceless treasure that went missing from the Ashmolean Museum.

Now it features in The Seven Ages of Britain, presented by David Dimbleby.

In the book which accompanies his TV series (Hodder & Stoughton, £25), the broadcaster describes sitting in the Ashmolean one evening after closing time, holding the jewel, which is just over two inches long. He writes: “I was holding in my hand an object held by Alfred the Great and presented by him to one of his bishops. Until this moment I had only thought about him as a figure of myth: the king who burnt the peasant woman’s cakes while in hiding from the Vikings. Suddenly, he had become a real person to me.”

As he says, little things bring the past alive. The book, and TV series, aims to tell the nation’s story through objects, each of them beautifully illustrated.

The seven eminent contributors include Oxford don and Tudor expert Susan Doran, of Jesus College, on The Age of Power.

She describes how Henry VIII burned monasteries while creating his own iconography of power.

The book succeeds in presenting an eye-catching exploration of the nation’s history, despite the fact that the theme-based approach means omitting the inconvenient periods when art did not mirror events.

* The Seven Ages Of Britain will be on Sunday evenings on BBC1 from the end of January.