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“... in the form of a film show, CD-Roms and audiotapes. A BBC book accompanies the series, and Neil MacGregor, the indefatigable director of the Gallery, not only does the TV presentations but is making a hectic lecture tour (Glasgow, Liverpool, Cardiff, Belfast: admission free). We are talking about as professionally orchestrated an art offensive as ...”

“... at the bottom, giving it a frayed and bedraggled appearance. As the British Museum’s director, Neil MacGregor, says in the book published to accompany the exhibition and a parallel series of broadcasts on Radio 4, German history in this vision is so tattered and damaged that it has to be subjected to repeated reworkings. If the eagle represents the ...”

“... pictures which can be seen at the Villa Medici in Rome until 28 January, Olivier Bonfait and Neil MacGregor challenge us to take theology as seriously as aesthetics. They also prove that it requires more than a sensitive eye and a generous imagination to understand a picture. The thesis of the exhibition and its catalogue (Edizioni de Luca, 283 ...”

“... British Museum would have to invent their own way of getting there. Among the present directors, Neil Cossons (Science Museum) has never worked outside a museum, coming up via the Ironbridge Gorge and the National Maritime Museums; Alan Borg (V&A) moved from university posts in art history, to the Tower of London, the Sainsbury Centre and the Imperial War ...”

“... new director of the British Museum, that the person ideally suited to front the Remain campaign is Neil MacGregor, much loved, with a TV and radio profile and a charismatic speaker. It won’t happen, of course, and in this morning’s Guardian the name of the Duke of Edinburgh is put forward to spearhead the campaign. It’s only in the middle of the ...”

“... science on one side and rock bands on the other. He did subsequently accept an invitation from Neil MacGregor to speak at the British Museum, which was the last occasion on which I observed him close to (it was the day Saddam Hussein had been captured, which may explain why he was looking so cheerful). But having heard what he thought it appropriate ...”

“... question of Poussin’s place in French art, but the selectors, Pierre Rosenberg of the Louvre and Neil MacGregor of the National Gallery, opted to avoid controversy, and simply to include the ‘most beautiful’ works. Important paintings that didn’t make the grade were omitted, even when (as in the case of the Richelieu Bacchanals) preparatory ...”

“... The abject surrender of Neil Hamilton, the ‘envelope man’ who changed the law so that he could sue the Guardian for libel, deprived the nation of an exhilarating and informative court case. When the Guardian alleged that Hamilton, Tory MP for Tatton, had taken money from Mohammed AI Fayed, chairman of Harrods to lobby Parliament against a Department of Trade inquiry which eventually denounced Fayed as a liar, the cocky MP announced that he was at last going to get even with the liberal press ...”

“... pictures to reduce texts to captions. Buddha from Gandhara, 2nd-3rd century AD Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects is a sequence of 100 short essays about things in the British Museum and what can be learned from them. The essays began as notably successful radio broadcasts and have gone on to become an illustrated ...”

“... which made picketing illegal, preparing the police and changing the guard at the NCB. Sir Ian MacGregor was the other reason this strike was unlike any other. The choice of MacGregor as chairman of the NCB was made by Nigel Lawson, Peter Walker’s predecessor. MacGregor was as ...”

“... opening of The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army. There are speeches in the Great Court – Neil MacGregor as always the best, no one that I’ve ever heard ‘turning’ a speech as well as he does and giving it a flick at the finish. There’s also what is billed in the programme as a ‘Special Guest’. This turns out to be Gordon Brown, who ...”

“... Siddall [the previous chairman of the National Coal Board], it was discreetly pointed out to MacGregor [the present chairman], had managed to achieve the same sort of result without any bothersome early warnings ... but although there was undoubtedly some dissent along these lines, it was pretty muted. ‘There was a spirit of MacGregorism abroad, and ...”

“... patently absurd, it is impossible to understand the attitude of some of those involved – such as Neil Kinnock – without appreciating that a weaker version of the argument does have a certain intuitive appeal. The case for going on subsidising uneconomic pits rests on two propositions. First, production of North Sea oil will peak next year or very soon ...”

“... greatest follies. Nor do I refer only to the Conservative Party. I voted out of conviction for Neil Kinnock and believe that he will make a considerable prime minister: but it has dawned on a number of the more perceptive members of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy that by devising a Byzantine system of election, involving the whole rigmarole of the ...”

“... eventually set up a separate union, the Union of Democratic Mineworkers. The Scottish-American Ian MacGregor, appointed head of the National Coal Board, was clear that ‘the key to the whole strike was Nottinghamshire and its 31,000 miners. If we could keep this vast and prosperous coalfield going, then I was convinced, however long it took, we could ...”