But then I wondered whether it was true. One imagines that nominations for jobs of this sort somehow emerge out of the ether, possibly to emerge in the upper reaches of the responsible department, DCMS (the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport), and possibly going from there to Downing Street to be rubber stamped. Exceptionally to the Queen. All a matter of nudges and winks - and a word in the right ear might well propel a nomination down a snake or up a ladder.
Maybe it is true that Downing Street, unusually, intervened in this particular case. Perhaps someone there did not like her, thought that she was unlikely to be a useful team player on a board. Perhaps it did not help that she was off-message. But how are we ever to know?
The list of trustees and their résumés is to be found at reference 2. No-one that I had heard of and the few that I checked suggested that one had the usual mixture of senior people, from science, business, the academy and no doubt elsewhere. Quite possibly also the case that these jobs were sometimes used as plums with which to reward deserving chaps on their retirement. A supplement to their gongs. Nothing particularly wrong with that either.
But do we really want appointments of this sort to be made more or less in public, with the full panoply of advertisements, selection centres and selection boards? Feedback for the rejected candidates? Would such a panoply mainly serve to screen the real action, which would carry on much as it does now?
In the meantime, how on earth does one check a claim such as was made in yesterday's Guardian? Beard clearly is a senior member of Newnham College at Cambridge. I trust reference 1 on that point. And, assuming that I have got it right and the 'board' in the quote below is indeed the 'board of trustees', I trust reference 2 on the formal arrangements for appointing trustees. But that leaves plenty of space in-between where things are much more vague. Maybe a note was put to the Prime Minister saying that Beard had been nominated by the ruling faction A but that dissident faction B were very against for reasons C and suggesting that on this occasion he might want to overrule faction A. Maybe somebody had a word with him.
My present position is that such notes & words should remain private, at least for a decent interval, say 20 years to give time for the dust to settle. We have to trust those we put in power to play the game with a reasonably straight bat. Perhaps I will come up with a more substantial line to take in the course of the upcoming Ewell Village anti-clockwise.
PS: I ought to declare that while I know next to nothing about Beard, I have a strong aversion to her. Far too fond of appearing on television to be a proper person.
Reference 1: https://www.newn.cam.ac.uk/. The source of the snap.
Reference 2: https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/governance. The source for the management agreement with DCMS which tells us, inter alia, that: 'In line with the founding legislation or documents and where applicable, the Government's Code of Practice on Corporate Governance, the Board will consist of a Chair, together with twenty-four members that have a balance of skills and experience appropriate to directing the British Museum's business. 15 are appointed by the Prime Minister, 5 by the Trustees, 1 by HM the Queen and 4 by the Secretary of State on the nominations of the Royal Academy, the Society of Antiquaries of London, the British Academy and the Royal Society respectively ... The Director is appointed by the Board with the approval of the Prime Minister'.
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