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This month witnesses the 250th anniversary of the British Museum.

A lecture to mark the achievement is available at and is an instructive and rather moving piece written by Neil Macgregor, who has been running the museum for the last seven years.

In fact, it feels like a template for how museums all over the world should be run. During his tenure at the British Museum, visitor numbers have exceeded all other cultural attractions in the country, with six million visitors a year.

Who, in the face of such numbers can argue against the general public's interest in and engagement with art?

And he has turned what was a financial mess into a shiny diamond. Macgregor's quiet passion for the museum is on display in abundance in the lecture.

And in an age of the soundbite and the pressure to reduce and condense, it is wonderful to see a major cultural leader profess that if the museum has a mission statement, it would be "to complicate the question".

Next month sees a major exhibition open on Iran, the third in a series of exhibitions looking at emperors. This one focuses on Shah Abbas: the re-making of Iran, and underlines Macgregor's desire to forge cultural links with countries which have not enjoyed the warmest of relations with the West.

It is the wisdom inherent in learning about history and what it can teach us about the present and our engagement with the world, which interests Macgregor and his team of curators.