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D AYS BEFORE he retired at the end of 2015, Neil MacGregor addressed colleagues and friends at the British Museum. As they raised their glasses, he quoted T.S. Eliot: “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice.” A few years on, however, the commanding voice in museumland is not his successor as director of the British Museum, nor is it another grandee. It is the government. In February the chairman of the Royal Museums Greenwich, a devoted Tory, resigned after ministers blocked the reappointment of a trustee, an academic who repo...

Voters in “Red Wall” seats will replace “people from metropolitan bubbles” on the boards of Britain's museums and heritage bodies to stop them bowing to pressure from “woke” activists over contested history. Oliver Dowden, the Culture Secretary, said on Saturday that he wants people from the North and the Midlands to join the management of top cultural organisations and give them “the courage to stand up against the political fads and noisy movements of the moment”. Separately Robert Jenrick, the Communities Secretary, said he will a...

We won’t allow Britain’s history to be cancelled I want to take not a Maoist but a “moreist approach” to heritage: I want more statues erected; more chapters added to our national narrative 15 May 2021 • 9:00pm I am proud of our nation’s heritage. I don’t say this just as Culture Secretary, but as someone who happily spends their weekends exploring every part of it. I’m not alone in this passion. Our heritage unites us as a country, and draws visitors to our islands by the millions. And as someone whose love of heritage was learned, not inherited, I am deeply committed to ensu...

The EU’s stupidity will spark a new Brexit war Now that the trade deal has finally been ratified, Britain is free to start the fightback against Brussels 28 April 2021 • 9:30pm For months now, Britain has been strangely subdued, if not borderline submissive, in its dealings with Brussels. The provocations from Ursula von der Leyen and the French have been especially egregious, and yet No 10 has refused to take the bait, to the bafflement of many of its supporters. There was the outrageous threat by Brussels to confiscate contracted vaccine shipments to the UK, the despicable, counterpro...

books and culture Remaining Sovereign A historian argues that British membership in the EU, not Brexit, was the true aberration. Politics and law The Social Order It’s been nearly five years since I joined about 17 million other Brits in marking the box next to “Leave.” In the exhausting, polarizing tumult that followed, with successive prime ministers searching for a deal acceptable to Brussels and Parliament, I admit to a few pangs of “Bregret.” Efforts to reverse the referendum result always seemed anti-democratic; once started, the process had to be finished. Bu...