Hope: The Story of the Blue Whale

Hope, the four-tonne, 25-metre long blue whale skeleton is the icon of the Natural History Museum. Suspended by steel wires and captured in a majestic swooping posture, her reconstruction is a work of art as well as a feat of engineering.

Hope's story begins in 1891 when she was found beached off the coast of Ireland. A lucrative find for a local fisherman, her skeletal remains were sold to the Museum. The project to restore her took three years to complete, including 10 months of painstaking laboratory work to clean and repair 221 bones.

Combining the latest scientific research into blue whales with behind-the-scenes imagery, this book sheds light on the largest creature ever to have lived on Earth.