Okay, I'm going to keep my voice down for a minute because we're in a museum in London.

Obviously, the British Museum is an inherently British institution. It's the first institution to actually be called British.

That is Nicholas Cullinan. He became director of the British Museum in 2024.

Hans Sloan, our founder, of course, who offered an extraordinary collection of 80,000 objects

to the nation, did it in a very deliberate way. He said he wanted it to be for the benefit of

all persons, but he also stipulated that it was to be offered first to the city of London

because it had the most international audience

and then he left a list in descending order of other cities it should be offered to

if that didn't happen based on how many people from different parts of the world

would have access to his collection so second was st petersburg and then i think it was

paris berlin and madrid there's a lovely idea about second was St. Petersburg, and then I think it was Paris, Berlin and Madrid.

There's a lovely idea about museums being either windows or mirrors.

For example, the National Portrait Gallery could be thought of as a mirror.

It's a mirror of Britishness.

You know, history of the nation through portraits.

The British Museum from the very beginning was clearly a window museum.

It's about opening windows into other worlds, other cultures, other epochs.

Can you define Britishness?

Probably the word sorry.

Sorry is our first response to a lot of things.

If someone bumps into you, you apologize.

I think sorry is a very British thing.

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