HOWZAT

It must have come as a shock to his parents, both doctors, when he dropped out after five years in favour of taking an MA in art at the Courtauld Institute.

It seems that his deep engagement with artworks – which anyone will recognise from his many television and radio appearances – was awakened when he was very young.

He remembers standing entranced before the eerily astounding Salvador DalÍ image of the Crucifixion that Kelvingrove Gallery first showed in 1952. He bought a postcard and kept it under his bed for years.

And he treasures the thrill of having touched the Rossetta Stone for the first time on that journey through London.

It is this sense of emotional engagement with art that runs like electricity through his career.

MacGregor started lecturing in art history at Reading University in 1975 before moving on to edit the fine arts periodical The Burlington Magazine in 1981. Five years later, he was a highly controversial choice as director of the National Gallery. Having been called in to advise the board of trustees, they were so taken by his learning and conviction that he was offered the job after the leading contender pulled out. He had no experience and the future of the gallery was fraught with problems from leaking roofs to an outbreak of legionnaires’ disease. But MacGregor proved himself not only highly capable but extremely popular. He was, says his successor Charles Saumarez-Smith, “one of the most able, intelligent and intellectually supportive people I have ever known, with an extraordinary ability to get on with people of all sorts”.

It is hard not to be charmed by the slight, dark and handsome director who patrols his museum every morning, familiarising himself with one or other of the seven million items as well as their custodians, whom he invites to weekly breakfast meetings to discuss plans and progress. MacGregor is a man of great erudition, deep spiritual conviction (hisSeeing Salvation show at the National Gallery was stunning), profound personal integrity and a delightfully irreverent giggle.

He appears to have little interest in the trappings of his position. He is the first director not to live in a grand apartment on the premises of the British Museum. He owns few paintings – he was spoilt by his time at the National Gallery, he jokes. He turned down a knighthood, though he does not discuss it. And he appears to find his satisfaction and reward in the simple fulfilment of a civic duty.

But he is also a skilled political mover and a confidant of the former Labour leader Tony Blair. He invited Gordon Brown to open The First Emperorand Boris Johnson, the classicist, to open its successor, Hadrian. An accomplished cultural diplomat – though he hates the term: “diplomat is conventionally taken to mean the promotion of the interests of a particular state and that is not what we are about at all” – he is also a highly skilled media presence.

These charms are as much part of his job as his erudition and passion. This is the man who could work with the Iraqis even during the war, trying to instigate a programme to protect their national treasures, or who managed to coax the Iranians into allowing the museum to stage a huge show about Persia by persuading the hostile President Ahmadinejad to counter all that Ancient Greek propaganda that the Persians were barbarians at the gate.

But perhaps most of all MacGregor is a teacher. His mission is to put across that moving human message that lies within our ancient historical artefacts. He wants to disseminate the wisdom of history. And next year we can look forward to two blockbusting British Museum shows, on Shah Abbas and Montezuma, both of which will explore the creation of national identity. They are about aspects of history with which we must engage if we are to have any hope of understanding the world today.

Saint Neil is clearly a man of faith. And, as far as his career is concerned, his most profound belief is that the British Museum was established for the benefit of all nations.

Curriculum vitae

June 1946 Born in Glasgow

1975-81 Lecturer in art history at the University of Reading

1981-86 Editor of The Burlington Magazine

1986-2002 Director of the National Gallery

2002-date Director of the British Museum

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