That combination of passionate erudition and accessibility would, you might think, make Mary Beard a shoo-in for the board of the country’s most prestigious historical institution.

You would be wrong. The 65-year-old scholar has been rejected by Downing Street as a trustee of the British Museum, the Observer understands. Whitehall sources said the decision last year to turn her down had been made because of her pro-European views, which she has frequently expressed via social media.

Now, in response to the first rejection of a proposed British Museum trustee by No 10 for many years, the museum is understood to be planning to take matters into its own hands and appoint Beard without the lengthy and sometimes byzantine process of the Whitehall system.

Under the current arrangement, Downing Street has a say over the appointment of most of the museum’s 25 trustees, but the museum’s constitution allows it to choose five for itself. “Good for the trustees,” said one longstanding former board member, who did not want to be named. “The decision to reject her is more about political correctness than respected classical scholarship.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/01/british-museum-put-mary-beard-on-the-board-despite-downing-st-veto