Neil MacGregor is one of those rare public intellectuals who manages to translate his brilliant ideas into a format that reaches those parts of a public audience that other brainboxes cannot reach. Starting with A History of the World in 100 Objects in 2010, then Shakespeare’s Restless World: An Unexpected History in 20 Objects two years later, and Germany: Memories of a Nation, told again via objects in 2014, he has developed his own signature and highly successful approach to the narration and examination of history.

And he does it, moreover, with a multimedia flourish, with each theme explored simultaneously in books, in exhibitions at the British Museum (where he was director from 2002 to 2015, before leaving to head up the Humboldt Forum, a museum complex under construction in Berlin’s restored Stadtschloss), and in BBC radio series which he presents with his warm, urgent, engaging Scottish lilt, the same lilt he is using to order coffee at the London hotel where we meet.