The National Trust - & Mrs McGrady the DG

Two of my least favourite phrases are 'reaching out' and the 'the need to be relevant.'  So it was dispiriting to hear the new Director General of the National Trust trot out both of them in a BBC interview.

Here is Mrs McGrady in full flow:

"I want to reach more people, and more people live in urban areas. The days of walking into one of our beautiful houses and saying that a family lived here, that's not going to do it

We need to think of what's relevant -why would someone in the middle of Birmingham say that's interesting. What is it in Birmingham that they would get more interest from? "

Well actually that's an easy question to answer. Just at the moment the good citizens of Birmingham -or a least a sizeable majority of them -are praying that Aston Villa wins promotion to the Premier League and that their other team, Birmingham City, avoids relegation to League One.  So perhaps, if she is serious about 'reaching out' and being 'relevant to urban people' she ought to -seriously -consider spending some of the National Trust's £600 million annual income on sponsoring a football team -like Birmingham City -who -judging by their performance this year -are urgently in need of a cash injection.

But actually why does she want to 'reach out' and why 'be relevant?'  Surely the whole point about the National Trust is that it's success was built on NOT BEING RELEVANT. So, when big houses were being pulled down and no one thought they had any future in the 'relevant' modern post war world the National Trust stepped in and saved them and their contents for future generations. Equally when the coastline was being raped and pillaged with caravan parks and bungalow developers (for -I am afraid to say -urban people) the National Trust stepped into the breach and bought and saved many miles of coastline.

So-learning from the past -if I was Mrs McGrady I might just ask myself the opposite question to the one she has posed.  What is irrelevant -or thought to be so -in modern society?  Well here is a thought for her -Pride in British History.  In it's ownership are many houses which are intrinsically linked to many of the great names of British history. So let's celebrate their contribution to our and the world's culture and stop making grovelling apologises for their occasional lapses into behaviour which today would be unacceptable.