“If anyone tells me something isn’t possible, I’ll go all the more into making it happen.”

Nicholas Cullinan has a way of making almost portentous statements so quietly that they seem part of everyday chat. It’s the same when he says that at the British Museum, where he became director in March, he is overseeing the most ambitious museum reconstruction ever attempted — “a complete holistic transformation, top to bottom, inside out, buildings, collection, visual identity”. And when he doesn’t miss a beat at my questions about the rumoured reconstruction bill, a staggering ￡1bn.

The startling statistics about Britain’s biggest cultural institution are no exaggeration, though: with around 3,500 rooms and some 8mn objects in its collection, it is, according to former trustee Antony Gormley, “[one of] the last unmodernised great museums in Europe”. Add to that its recent reputational bashing: last year’s scandal over thefts from the collection, perpetual arguments about sources of philanthropy and funding, and the seemingly insoluble conundrum about repatriation, in particular of the Parthenon Marbles.