Neil MacGregor at the BBC

Back in 2010 one of my favourite programmes on the radio was Neil MacGregor’s iconic series “A History of the World in 100 objects”. It seemed to represent two of our institutions at their best. His calm but enthusiastic delivery would give you an informative background to the object. His clear delivery was enough to get a feel of the object without images (although you could go to the website to see them). It’s good to know that in this age of multimedia that Radio 4 are still able to fulfil their remit as an informative broadcaster. This is the station that gives us “In our Time” hosted by Melvin Bragg, probably the best thing on radio 4. I’ll leave that for another article though. For anyone that missed this series you can still listen to it on the Radio 4 website.
Here’s the link – A History of the World in 100 Objects

I was sad to hear earlier this year that Neil MacGregor was going to be stepping down from being director of the British Museum at the end of this year. At 68 he is now going into part-time retirement. I’m sure this won’t be the last we hear of him though. He’s already done another series for Radio 4 on the history of Germany. It would seem that part of his heart lies in Germany as one of his projects will be chairing a committee on of Germany’s cultural projects, the Humboldt Forum arts complex.

It has been speculated that he would work with the BBC on an updated version of the series Civilisation. He has said that no discussions have taken place. Whether this is to or not I don’t know, but I’m sure there will be something in the pipeline. It would be a waste to lose someone with his talents. It is no surprise to hear that the number of visitors has risen during his time as director of the British Museum by over 2 million. Only the Louvre in Paris is more visited than the British Museum. Those are going to be some boots to fill.