I have been asked for more information on the 1988 National Audit Office report on ‘Management of the Collections of the English National Museums and Galleries’.

As I remember it (I haven’t located a copy online), it was deeply – and, I’m afraid, correctly – critical of the stores at the V&A and led to a hearing at the Public Accounts Committee in which the then directors of the British Museum and the V&A were grilled pretty brutally (it was not long after Elizabeth Esteve-Coll was appointed Director of the V&A). This led fairly directly to the deeply controversial restructuring of the V&A which concentrated more resources on the management of back-of-house facilities at Blythe House and the creation of a systematic inventory, which, from memory, was completed in the mid-1990s.

So, one of many questions which the independent enquiry into the thefts at the BM might answer is whether the BM managed to escape these pressures. I doubt it. But I can’t help but notice that much of its online catalogue of Greek gems is unillustrated and I wonder why.

Also, if the independent enquiry, so called, is being led by the former deputy chairman of trustees who is still on the audit committee, it may do good work and be well placed to undertake the necessary investigations, but can scarcely be described as independent – indeed, this could be part of the problem, that the museum has resisted, or been unwilling to countenance, properly independent enquiry.