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A solar-powered lamp and mobile-phone charger kit is the object that's most representative of the world we live in today. At least that is what we are being told by the British Museum's Neil MacGregor and his curatorial team behind Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4's A History of the World in 100 Objects.

They say it was chosen as the 100th object in the series because:

"It represents a global preoccupation. The search for an affordable and sustainable power source is of importance to today's global population as well as affecting future generations in both environmental terms as well as economic."

Fair enough - although one person to whom I spoke scoffed and said it was the sort of thing one finds in those Innovations catalogues that come free with the Sunday papers. And there is something of the gimmick about it.

Not the object so much, but the selecting of any object from today to sit within a grand and scholarly history of the world. It is perhaps the job of history and future generations to decide which of today's objects warrant special attention, not the current crop of curators at the British Museum.

It seems an odd note on which to finish what has been a terrific series. There have been over 10 million downloads of the programmes, about half of which have been from abroad. Hundreds of other museums from around the country have taken part, as have individuals and schools.

It is an excellent example of two public institutions - the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ and the British Museum - coming together in a partnership that delivers to the public valuable content that either organisation working on its own could not have supplied and distributed.

The series has been compared with, Kenneth Clarke's late-1960s Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ series of the history of art. There are similarities: both MacGregor and Clark are distinguished academics that have run major British cultural institutions including the National Gallery. Both are significant Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ production projects. And both are dominated by the authorial voice of the individual academic.

There is one very big difference. Civilisation was a television series, while History of the World in 100 Objects has been broadcast on radio. Given the way that technology developed, you might have thought it would be the other way round. But radio has served the MacGregor series very well.

First and foremost it foregrounds his excellent scripts. It is a challenge to tell a complex story on radio without having pictures to help carry the load. Such is MacGregor's skill as a writer that there were times when I found his sentence structure, precision of language and seamless shifting from one thought to another more compelling than the object he was describing. It is a masterclass in writing for radio.

And radio was the ideal medium for his message. The objects that he was describing were merely props. We did not need to see them. His real purpose was to tell the stories locked inside the things. The history of the world is not best told through pre-existing books or verifiable accounts. Even where such documents exist, they are partial and subjective.

Objects are much more reliable story-tellers. They will not favour the winner of a battle over the loser or a master over his slave. As McGregor says, "objects bring a voice to the voiceless".

And MacGregor has brought a voice to them.