On the road with Neil MacGregor, the man who uses culture to win friends

Neil MacGregor chose his words with characteristic care and wit as he unveiled the river god Ilissos in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, alongside an icy river Neva. “The more chilly the politics between governments, the more important the relationship between museums,” he argued, anticipating accusations that he was handing Vladimir Putin a propaganda gift in marble.

The loan of an ancient Greek figure from the Parthenon (aka Elgin) marbles collection – the first time any part of the 2,500-year-old sculptures has left the British Museum – was indeed a gift, but one intended to celebrate the 250th birthday of a close relative. Opening five years apart in the mid-18th century, the British Museum and the Hermitage are “sisters, almost twins”, MacGregor explained.

While making documentaries for Radio 4’s Front Row, I’ve watched MacGregor at close quarters as he skilfully tiptoes through political minefields. I travelled with him to China in 2007 as he negotiated the biggest foreign loan of the terracotta warriors. I was also with him on two trips to Iran at a time when diplomatic relations were not simply chilly but nonexistent.

The phrases “cultural diplomacy” and “soft power” sit uncomfortably with the man who has been the director of the British Museum since 2002. Despite having sent more of the museum’s eight million objects on global trips than any of his predecessors, he’s cautious of being seen as a commissar of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s cultural wing.

For MacGregor, cultural exchanges between nations transcend political dispute. He passionately believes that the museum must lead the way, being the first institution to bring the whole world under one roof. As director of the most historically rich and diverse repository of human achievement in the world, MacGregor says he cannot be responsible for all theobjects in the British Museum collection without engaging with the countries from where the things originally came. In the last year alone, about 5,000 objects have left Bloomsbury on loan, half of which have been borrowed by 140 overseas museums.

Unveiling Ilissos in St Petersburg on Thursday – to the fury, it has to be said, of the Greek government – MacGregor talked of nations and museums. But the key to his international mission to loan and lend is forging personal contacts with individuals. The British Museum has pioneered training programmes for young curators to create an international network of scholars. Nearly 200 curators, from countries including Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan, have studied in London in the last 10 years. And those personal contacts go all the way to the top. The reason that the Hermitage is the recipient of an unprecedented loan of a part of the marbles is because of the close relationship MacGregor has forged with his long-standing Russian counterpart, Mikhail Piotrovsky.

MacGregor has impeccable manners and makes it his mission to show thanks to foreign hosts. One morning in 2007, shortly before we boarded a flight to Beijing, he told me he needed to pop into duty-free. “Bit early, isn’t it?” I suggested as he scanned the shelves and picked a fine single malt. “It’s for our host,” he said, “and so is this.” Reaching into his hand luggage, he pulled out a DVD with a sword-wielding, blue-faced Mel Gibson on the cover. Discreet pre-trip inquires had revealed that the director of China’s cultural relics bureau was a big fan of Braveheart and liked nothing better than to watch it while sipping a wee dram.

MacGregor arrived in the city of Xi’an, home to the terracotta warriors, armed with Scottish goodwill. The speech he made as he handed over his gifts to the director during a dinner the next evening was greeted with joyous applause. The deal was sealed. The guardians of the Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, were heading to London along with other treasures that had never left the museum in Xi’an, let alone travelled abroad.

It was striking that throughout the meal, and as several toasts were raised to cultural partnership, a large TV screen was left on in the corner of the dining room. It showed a live relay from Beijing where the Central Committee was meeting to ratify the latest government edicts, including proposals for closer economic and political engagement with the west. It was clear that our hosts felt duty-bound to keep one eye on the power base.

Later that evening, over a beer in a hotel bar, I wondered aloud if MacGregor’s relationship with the British government was not so dissimilar. After all, the terracotta deal had come in the wake of a previous trip he had made to China in 2005 with prime minister Tony Blair. Were art and culture simply being used to grease the wheels of international trade and politics?

The man who turned down a knighthood, fearful it could compromise his independence, bristled at the suggestion that he was doing any government’s bidding. “The government doesn’t fund the British Museum to do anything here in China,” he said with a rare flash of impatience. “But if good bilateral political relations can help encourage better cultural conversations across continents, that must surely be beneficial for everybody.”

He is also a firm believer that it works both ways – that cultural understanding can help build diplomatic bridges across wide political divides. In January 2009, I was with him in Tehran as he prepared to sign papers that would secure the release of treasures relating to 16th-century Persian ruler Shah Abbas. The British Museum exhibition would reveal how the roots of modern Shia Iran can be traced back to the reign of the greatest leader of the Safavid dynasty.

We had arrived in Tehran after a six-hour minibus drive through the desert from Isfahan, where Shah Abbas built his capital. En route, MacGregor immersed himself in the latest Chatham House reports on Iran. It did not look good. Political relations with Britain were growing increasingly frosty, the temperature having plummeted after the launch of the BBC’s Persia service had prompted a furious denouncement of British “spies” in the country. As a BBC journalist I had been warned that I wouldn’t be welcomed into an Iranian government building. I’d probably have to wait in the minibus. Fine, I replied, better than Evin prison. “Oh, I think you’ll be OK,” Neil assured me.

As it was, in a bizarre moment of mistranslated confusion, I was not only ushered into the conference room but then invited to sit at the top table as MacGregor faced a delegation of Iranian heritage chiefs and museum bosses, headed by one of President Ahmadinejad’s trusted deputies. A miniature Iranian flag sat alongside the union jack at one end of the table. In previous weeks, the only British flags seen in public in Tehran were those burning on the streets outside the embassy. “Well that’s a result,” MacGregor whispered with a giggle as I took my seat alongside him.

The British Museum man presented an eloquent case for the loan of priceless sculptures, ornaments and silk carpets, most of which would be leaving Iran for the first time. The Iranian deputy vice-president, sensing goodwill in the room, sprung an unexpected quid pro quo deal on MacGregor – you get Shah Abbas if we can have Cyrus the Great. He wanted the Cyrus cylinder – which is regarded by some historians as the first declaration of human rights. Created on the orders of the Persian king who invaded Babylon and freed the people from slavery and tyranny, the clay object is a sort of 2,500-year-old Middle East roadmap. The tiny cuneiform lettering records, in Babylonian, how every man, woman and child would now be free to practise their culture and religion. The declaration, made in 539BC, allowed the Jews, who’d been enslaved by Nebuchadnezzar after the destruction of Jerusalem, to return home.

MacGregor responded immediately that the British Museum was happy to consider the loan of any of the objects in its care, however precious, and that he would pass on the request to his trustees.

When the Cyrus cylinder went on show the following year, 2010, at the National Museum of Iran it attracted more than half a million people. I returned to Tehran with MacGregor at the end of the seven-month loan to reclaim the object.

Young Iranians were keen to tell me that the small clay object represented hope for their country. Glancing around nervously at the museum guards, one girl was tearful as she told me that looking at the cylinder was “like looking at a 3D TV”. She said her heart was beating fast with excitement because the pre-Islamic history of her country was not taught in schools. Another girl told me the broken object was like a piece of a puzzle – “a puzzle, happiness and freedom”. The cylinder was not just an ancient relic but a symbol of the future, she said: “It reminds us that we can be free, we will be free.”

It was a moving endorsement of MacGregor’s cultural mission. He may be charming, eloquent, enthusiastic, but he knows it’s the historical objects – the things – that do the real talking.