Advisory Council

I have spent a lifetime in education and was until August 2017 High Mistress of St Paul's Girls' School in west London. I now work as a consultant in international education, helping schools around the world create the best learning environment they can for their students. My specialisms in English Literature and Drama have led me to be aware of the power of language and to be constantly curious about human nature – about why people behave as they do. My work as a leader has made me think more deeply about human capability: what it is to be stretched and challenged, rather than overwhelmed by what lies before you.

The British Museum is to me the most extraordinary embodiment of what it means to be human; its collections chronicle the ways in which mankind has lived, grappling with the elemental challenges of life on earth through the millennia. The objects in the museum attest to those experiences as they have been felt by ordinary people as well as those with power and status. Among such an array of treasures it's easy to miss the small exhibits, reminding us that history is personal as well as monumental: I especially loved the tiny carved figures in the Ice Age exhibition and the little amulets brought up from the silt of the Nile Delta in Sunken Cities.

What is truly thrilling is that The British Museum, a museum 'of the world and for the world' in the words of our Director Hartwig Fischer, allows visitors to read the patterns of our past, offering an unparallelled resource as we confront the great questions of the future: how to live peaceably with one another and to share rather than compete for the world's resources. The Collection offers every visitor the possibility of a connection with those questions which is at once universal and personal. You enter the British Museum wondering what you'll find; you leave it renewed and changed. That is why I became a Member and why as an educator, I hope to see the museum engaging more and more with the post millennial generation of young people upon whom that future depends.

A chartered accountant and banker by profession, I have a long-standing enthusiasm for and commitment to the heritage sector. After 20 years working in international corporate finance I decided to leave full-time City-based work to focus on a series of voluntary or part-time roles in things I was passionate about.

I was first inspired by the British Museum as a schoolboy visitor to the Pompeii exhibition in the 1970s, and constantly find new artistic and architectural inspiration at the Museum. Having been a Member on and off since my student days, in 2009 I successfully applied to join the Council of the British Museum Friends. I am a particular fan of the exhibition programme and the Museum's use of new technologies to reveal hidden secrets in ancient objects.

In 2007 my family and I took on the tenancy of an architecturally important Modern Movement house owned by the National Trust, The Homewood in Esher, Surrey. We're responsible for looking after the house, maintaining its six-acre woodland garden, opening the house and garden to the public up to two days a week from April to October, and leading a wonderful group of National Trust volunteers who assist in the house, garden and grounds.

Since 2011 I have also served as an elected as a member of the Council of the National Trust, having served on the National Trust London and South East Advisory Board from 2004 to 2013.

I am a lawyer by background and I work in banking supervision. I have been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to study, work and live in several countries. From my native Italy and other European countries to the US, China and Hong Kong, and London where I currently live.

Being very passionate about archeology and the history of humanity, the British Museum was among the very first landmarks I visited when I moved to London. It was love at first sight! It was therefore very natural that I felt strongly motivated to become a member as soon as I learnt about the scheme. 

Since then, I have been to countless exhibitions (and to each more than once!), wandered in the Museum's galleries (alone and with family and friends) and enjoyed the comforts of the Members' room for more weekends than I dare to remember. From the very beginning, and throughout the years, the British Museum has been a second home to me. I am therefore truly honored and extremely grateful for the opportunity to contribute to its mission as a member of the British Museum Friends Advisory Council.

It is very difficult to identify one favorite object in the Museum's collection. However, if I really have to choose one I would definitely say the two-winged, human-headed lions that flanked an entrance to the royal palace of King Ashurnasirpal II in Nimrud. Their half-human, half-animal character symbolises the essential connection between humankind and nature which is indispensable to harmony. They're colossal and yet their smile is not intimidating but quite serene, embodying a 'sweet' strength which is not fuelled by aggressiveness but pervaded by kindness. Whenever I look at them, I am filled with a feeling of calmness and protection and I am reminded that as human beings we are all members of a whole which transcends time.

I had a professional career in international finance until 1991 when I switched to university administration and promotion overseas, before retiring in 2006. Always passionate about textiles, especially traditional techniques, I have amassed a considerable textile collection with a focus on Southeast Asia and Southwest China. I launched a tribal textile information website in 2000 with an associated forum, aiming to provide an online resource to assist fellow enthusiasts around the world.

In retirement I have been able to indulge my textile interests via the internet, museums and textile groups. I hope to be able to share my professional experience and personal interests for the benefit of the Museum and its Members.

I initially joined the British Museum Friends in 1989, drawn in by the 'Caves of a Thousand Buddhas' exhibition when planning a trip to China, including the Dunhuang caves. I maintained my Membership when I moved from London to Canterbury in 1993 wanting to continue supporting the Museum, receiving the magazine and to be kept in touch with activities – especially before the ubiquity of the internet.

The British Museum has an incredible resource of textiles and other items of material culture in its huge collection. From time to time special textiles appear on short-term display, particularly in Room 91 where the barkcloth exhibition was a stunning example after the very careful work by the Museum's conservators. This has been followed by the huge, complex, Assamese Vrindavani Vastra textile. The excellent online research database provides user-friendly access with images for a major part of the collection. Viewings may be arranged to see selected items for individual research or group visits in the study room at Blythe House, where I have experienced several excellent visits. I really value this accessibility which has enriched my retirement.

The British Museum is far more than a repository of fabulous objects from around the world, it is a source of beauty and spiritual refreshment. The building seems to symbolise its dual role – a classical facade like a giant box protecting a treasure trove of objects within. This gives way in the Great Court to a sunlit space full of people, full of joy and wonder. Many times, this has bucked me up on a damp and wet London day.

I first came to the Museum as a child for Tutankhamun and then the Jade Princess. I've kept coming back, for the collection, for the exhibitions and for a place to meet old friends and then there's a professional connection too...

I spent 26 years at the BBC working first in Arts and then News, across TV, radio and online. It was in an 'interactive' capacity that I worked closely on the partnership with the British Museum for Neil McGregor's defining series, 'The History of the World in 100 objects'. Through the BBC's network of local radio stations, we helped create an online collection of people's favourite objects and their stories. A clear example of the power of object-led, storytelling to deepen understanding of history and culture, I came away with deep respect for the expertise of the Museum's curators and their passion for the extraordinary things they look after so well. 

After the BBC I worked for the National Trust, variously as director of communications, media, content and partnerships. The National Trust is also a museum or rather museums. Its 300-plus mansions stuffed with objects ranging from the everyday to the extraordinarily rare. 

A museum that sets out to be a museum of the world, for the world presents itself with huge challenges of reach and relevance. I hope I can help with that. This great institution needs to be reflective of modern Britain and through its collections shed beams of light on the world today. My favourite object does have contemporary relevance; The Tree of Life is in the Africa gallery. A black twisted sculpture made from iron in the shape of a tree. It is forbidding and dominates its space but it's actually a beacon of hope. The black iron pieces are broken up bits of guns and munitions, given up by fighters at the end of Mozambique's bitter civil war. Latter-day swords into ploughshares, guns into art. It makes you think.

I'm a lawyer by profession and work for an international bank. While based in Tokyo, I'm a frequent visitor to the UK professionally and personally. My link with the country started in 1993, when I arrived in the UK to read law as a graduate student. The UK has since continued to be an integral part of my interests and curiosity.

The British Museum is at the centre of many fond memories that I have had of the UK over the years. During many visits to the Museum, I saw and felt a history of the world walking through the Rooms with numerous objects on display from all over the world. While I was a graduate student, I was admitted to the Round Reading Room and felt privileged to be a reader under the most beautiful dome. I also sometimes dropped in at the Museum just to enjoy the building with its classical architectural glory. It was my desire to return something to this great institution that prompted me to become a Member.

If I'm asked to name just one among my favourites at the Museum, it would be the Franks Casket – the small whale-bone box made in Anglo-Saxon times.  As well as its intricate carvings featuring Roman, Christian and Germanic legends, I am fascinated with the mysterious way in which the box had survived for more than one thousand years until its eventual discovery in 19th-century France. 

However great its collections may be, a museum can't be great on its own. Rather, it becomes great when people experience and regard it as such. The Advisory Council plays a vital role in this regard, acting as a bridge between the British Museum and its friends. It's my privilege to be part of the Council and to serve the Membership in support of this world-class museum. 

I am an environmental historian by training, with stints in public history and ecological anthropology. With my husband Paul Hains I founded Aeon, a digital magazine of ideas and culture, which covers philosophy, science, history, psychology and other fields, and I am the editorial director there. Our work shares the Museum's mission of communicating knowledge to the widest public audience in a spirit of humane and cosmopolitan inquiry. When I was 16 I visited London and the British Museum for the first time, struck by the difference between seeing objects in books, and encountering them, full of presence, in the 'flesh'. Since then I have spent many happy hours in the Museum, both when visiting London and during a time living in the city. As an Australian, with a great love of, and regular visits to the Museum, I hope to represent the international friends on the Council, in the spirit of Director Hartwig Fischer's vision of the Museum as being 'of the world, for the world'.

It's extremely difficult to choose a single object to embody the Museum in my mind, but for this purpose I'd like to nominate the beautiful, contemporary shovelnose-shark mask from the Torres Strait artist Alick Tipoti, which can be seen in the Living and Dying gallery. The mask is rich in traditional symbolism, with its fish, frigate birds, human heads and the shark itself. When the shark is disturbed on the seafloor it takes off, creating a cloud of dust in the water, lit up by phosphorence, which represents the creation of the Milky Way or Kaygasiw Usul. The mask has been used in contemporary dance, as performed by the artist at the Museum in 2015 to accompany the exhibition Indigenous Australia. Apart from its sheer beauty and delight in the natural world, the mask embodies something important about the Museum's collections and their living importance to ongoing cultural creativity. Tipoti's work was inspired by an exquisite, haunting shovel-nose shark mask collected for the Museum in the 1880s, also from the Torres Strait. Tipoti has refashioned the iconography and materials of the original turtle-shall mask in contemporary form, demonstrating both the vitality of culture, and the service that a great, global Museum can provide to the keepers of culture as they renew and rethink the meaning of such deeply symbolic objects. Apart from its specific cultural significance, to me the mask is a symbol of the interdependent relationship between culture, nature and cosmos – an ecological ethic which makes this an especially charged object, as are so many other objects in the collections.

After lecturing in English Literature for thirty years I retired in 2022 and am now a professor emerita. When my mother came down to London as a student in the late 1950s she got a job in an antiquarian bookshop opposite the British Museum, so when we came up for the day she would often take me there (I particularly remember the Tutankhamun exhibition), and it became a place I felt at home. Now I plan trips to London around exhibitions and always leave time to see other things too, because however often I have looked at them before there always seems to be something new to notice.

If I had to choose one object it would be the Royal Gold Cup of St Agnes, for two reasons: it has a link to some important diplomatic negotiations in the reign of James I, and in E. W. Hornung's short story 'A Jubilee Present' it is stolen from the Museum by Raffles, the amateur cracksman, who thinks it is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen (though in the end he posts it to Queen Victoria as a gift for her Diamond Jubilee because he can't think what else to do with it). 

I have a particular fondness for fictional portrayals of the Museum, particularly in the work of Georgette Heyer, whose characters are invariably disappointed by it (which always reminds me how much it has developed even within my memory). I like written labels (and hope that there will be enough light to read them by), but I have appreciated some of the digital additions to recent exhibitions, especially the coloured panels in the Ashurbanipal show.  

I am an undergraduate student at University College London reading Ancient History and Egyptology. I’ve been fascinated by Egyptology since I was six years old, and ever since I was ten I've wanted to one day become the next Director of the British Museum. Thus, when I first arrived in London to start my studies, it only made sense that the first place I went to was the Museum itself. To me the British Museum is *the* Museum. It is, in my mind, the best equipped to explore human history – from the days of Egypt right up to the present day – not just in terms of the evolution of our material culture, but also the evolution of our imagination and understanding of ourselves. This is why I love the Museum, and take every opportunity I can to visit.

I'm very proud and humbled, therefore, to be able to join the British Museum Friends Advisory Council. I hope that through doing so my dreams and aspirations for the Museum can positively contribute to its continuation as a world-leading institution. Then one day, when I am Director of the Museum (for that day will come!), I can look back on this experience and truly appreciate how crucial a role the Members play in making the Museum the wonderful institution that it is.

While I would say it's impossible for me to choose a sole object in the Museum which is my 'favourite', if I had to choose one it would be the Gayer-Anderson cat. To me it's a true testament to the finesse of Egyptian craftsmanship, but also embodies the longevity of the Egyptian civilisation. It's just one of the many objects housed by the Museum which shows the dogmatic principles that were always at the heart of the Egyptian psyche, even after multiple conquests and subjugations from foreign powers.

As a long-time Member of the Friends it's a privilege and a pleasure to serve on the Advisory Council to support the British Museum in caring for world treasures and sharing them freely with everyone, and in offering Friends an enjoyable and enriching Membership experience, helping us to feel part of the Museum community.

When I first joined the British Museum Society in 1993 I lived in the City and worked in the film industry in Soho, so the Museum felt like my local museum. The Museum's rich collection helps us learn about our past, explore our common humanity and develop our understanding of different cultures. One of the most exciting visits was donning a hard hat to see the early stages of the Great Court work from the roof, and I still proudly point out to friends 'our' funded pane of glass in the canopy.

After leaving the BBC in 2012 I've had more time to pursue my other interests in arts and heritage. I'm the Chair of the Trustee Board of the De Morgan Foundation, which cares for the De Morgan Collection of fine and decorative art by Arts & Crafts ceramicist William De Morgan and his renowned artist wife Evelyn De Morgan. After taking drawing studies at my local art school, where I also have a trustee role, I am currently studying etching, so I'm an enthusiastic visitor to the Prints and drawings room.

As well as art I have an interest in ancient history and it's fascinating to explore Museum objects from places I've visited around the world. I'm most often drawn to the British galleries, probably my favourite part of the Museum, we have many wonderful treasures of our own, such as the exquisite Sutton Hoo objects and, of course, the Lewis Chessmen.

With a background in classical art and archaeology, I feel attuned to the inherent curiosity that drives the appreciation of artefacts as a gateway to uncovering remote or long lost cultures.

Since graduating, I've worked in Marketing, PR and Business Development and my relationship with the British Museum has evolved, taking advantage of the huge diversity of resources and events that allow visitors to explore unfamiliar topics in an accessible and friendly manner.

I particularly admire the Museum's ability to use its world-class collection to generate fresh perspectives on how we understand our collective past and, in turn, question contemporary attitudes about society and culture. My favourite aspect of the Museum is how well it excels in highlighting connections. For instance, to be able to walk from the sculptures of the Parthenon to those from the rural shrine of Apollo Epikourious at Bassai within the Museum and discern similarities in themes and styles between the two is very special indeed.

I joined the Advisory Council because I'd like to create a stronger dialogue between the Museum and its Members, and help the wider community to have a more active relationship with the Museum and its development, regardless of their location.

A fascination with Indian culture and history prompted me to join the British Museum Friends in the mid-1980s, while researching a biography of Satyajit Ray and an academic study of Rabindranath Tagore's modernist paintings. As an editor working at Macmillan Publishers, Granada Television and The Times Higher Education Supplement – and latterly as a freelance author and journalist – I went on to write more than 25 books on subjects ranging from the history of writing/scripts to the history of science/measurement. Many involve the collections of the Museum. I'm pleased to help the Friends explore, understand and publicise the collections

Writing is among history's greatest inventions – perhaps the greatest, since it made history possible. Without writing, there would be no permanent recording, no Rosetta Stone and no British Museum as we know it. The Museum has, of course, one of the world's great collections of inscriptions, of keen interest to Friends – as I've come to appreciate while recently lecturing to them on the 'lost' Indus civilisation, on the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs and on the origins of writing, beginning perhaps in Ice Age caves.

Naturally, the Rosetta Stone holds a particular allure for me, as the author of two biographies of its chief decipherers: the British polymath Thomas Young (The Last Man Who Knew Everything) and the French Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion (Cracking the Egyptian Code). But as my favourite object at the Museum, I'd probably choose one of the miniature Indus seals on display in the Sir Joseph Hotung Gallery. I’ve even used one as a sort of logo on my professional website. Exquisitely carved in steatite (soapstone) some four millennia ago, the seals depict animal, human and divine figures, including a puzzling 'unicorn', next to mysterious glyphs. Once seen, never forgotten. Indus archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler called them "little masterpieces of controlled realism, with a monumental strength in one sense out of all proportion to their size and in another entirely related to it". The first seal to appear in print, in 1875, is in the British Museum's collection. Yet even now, after more than a century of scholarship, the Indus glyphs remain the world's most tantalising undeciphered script, as described in my book, Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts. Who knows? Perhaps in the future some young Friend, intrigued by the Indus seals, will help to take the decipherment further.

Immediately intrigued by a mummified cat seen on my first visit to the British Museum as a child, I became a regular visitor – and then a Member – when a music magazine I was working for ended up being based just up the road from Great Russell Street.

Having often smuggled in references to my love of history during my career as a music journalist and broadcaster – I even once worked on a radio show where we got Mary Beard to rate songs that mentioned 'ancient history' – it has been a relief for me (and, no doubt, my audience) now I can instead regularly immerse myself both in the Museum's collection and within the community of Members at lectures and other events. Indeed, it is a true honour to represent that lively, engaged and inquisitive group as a member of the British Museum Friends Advisory Council.

Choosing a favourite item from the Museum's collection feels a little bit like picking your favourite song (it changes every day...), but I am often drawn to the bust of Trajan in the galleries on the first floor. Not only does it reflect a personal passion for Italy while also affording an expressive glimpse into the projection of Roman power, but the sculpture possesses a star-like swagger I recognise from conducting interviews during my NME days. 

I'm a financial services lawyer, hobbyist creative blogger, occasional writer for various creative magazines and ultimately, an avid fan of the British Museum. I can still remember my first experience at the British Museum as a school child, learning about the incredible Rosetta Stone, which equipped us with the tools to translate hieroglyphics and understand more about the majesty and magic of ancient Egypt.

The fact that the Museum was free, and remains free, is one of the most wonderful things about London. Some of humanity's greatest creations are accessible to all – and the support of the Members is crucial to ensuring this remains the case. My motivation for becoming a Member of the Museum (aside from the exciting exclusive events, entry to the fascinating seasonal exhibits and the ability to find solace in the Members' Room): the chance to contribute to a place that inspired me and captivated my imagination (so that others can feel the same way!). I'm therefore honoured and humbled to be part of the Council.

My favourite piece in the British Museum is probably the Crouching Venus – a divine, beautiful and elegant work, I have sketched it many times! It was one of the things that sparked my endless love of ancient Greece and Roman mythology.