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I have chosen this radio from 1934. It belonged to my grandparents and my dad remembers it when he was growing up in the East End of London.

I love it because it's an ordinary object but it's important because it was a conduit to the outside world. My grandparents would have heard about the war, Churchill's speeches and the liberation of the concentration camps through this radio.

Towards the end of her life my grandmother's house became like a museum, an unchanged house from the 1940's. I have one particular memory when we were all in the sitting room before her funeral, and my father, trying to keep everyone's spirits up, plugged the radio in.
It was tuned to Radio 2 and 1930's band music ?I think it was Al Bowlly singing - came into the room. It was really eerie like we'd gone back in time and as if my grandmother was playing a little joke with us.

Radio was the route into the outside world as significant as television is to us now, so this object is a little bit of history.