Mr Suitable Boy makes it to the British museum

Writer Vikram Seth has been appointed a trustee of the British museum. The appointment, made by British Prime Minister Tony Blair last night, will be for a period of four years with immediate effect, it was officially announced here today. 52-year-old Seth is an established and widely acclaimed author. Born in Kolkata, he studied at Oxford, Stanford and Nanjing University, China. He has published five collections of verse, including one set of translations from Chinese and one set of animal fables, three novels, including A Suitable Boy and The Golden Gate.

He has received a wide range of awards for his writing, including the Sahitya Akademi Award, the W.H. Smith prize and both the Commonwealth poetry and fiction prizes. He was a senior editor at the Standford University Press (1985-86) and is an honorary fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was awarded Honorary Commander of British Empire in 2001. The British museum collections are derived from all continents and represent 10,000 years of human history.