Ever wondered when women started wearing knickers? If such questions intrigue you, this whistle-stop tour of domestic life over the centuries could be just the guilty pleasure for you.

Worsley divides the book into four sections  bedroom, bathroom, living room, kitchen and outlines the factors contributing to the development of each. For example, while separate bathrooms came about as a result of changing attitudes to hygiene, changes to kitchens have mainly been propelled by technology. Sitting rooms came about in response to Renaissance ideas about manners  and, of course, to house people's increasing possessions  while bedrooms didn't take on a private aspect until well into the 19th century.

Worsley's structure allows you to dip into sections and revisit the juicy bits easily. In the kitchen section, for example, she explains how we have become slaves to standardised recipes  from Eliza Acton who, around 1800, introduced a list of measured ingredients "before embarking on the instructions", to the Regulo gas oven in 1923, which "turned cookery from an art into a science". In the bedroom chapters, she examines the crippling effect of uptight Victorians on female sexuality, noting: "we've only exchanged one form of silence for another. The Victorians were reticent about sex, yet they were far better than we are at talking openly  about ageing, death, grief and mourning."

Worsley's popularised history (this book accompanied a BBC4 TV series) will engage people who might otherwise be uninterested. Occasionally she glosses over things, leaping across epochs in just one breath, and is guilty of focusing on her favourite surces and periods (the Tudors, Georgians and Victorians). Some of her opinons are eccentric too, such as when she compares the "scare-mongering" in 19th-century anti-masturbation propaganda with today's anti-drugs campaigning. And then there are the dirty details: sex, booze, drugs, upstairs/downstairs culture and  oh yes  the knickers (for the record, women started wearing them in the Regency period).

Yet it all works. From the plethora of detail emerges Worsley's overarching point, which is that "every single object in your home has its own important story to tell". It's the little things that define us as individuals and help us piece together the intricate puzzle of history.