Well-known NRI writer Vikram Seth has been appointed as a trustee of the British Museum.
The appointment, made by British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday night, will be for a period of four years with immediate effect, it was officially announced in London on Wednesday.
Fifty two-year old Vikram 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: A Novel in Verse, a travel book and a libretto.
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 Senior Editor at the Stanford University Press (1985-86), is an honorary fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and was awarded an honorary Commander of British Empire (CBE) in 2001.
The British Museum illuminates to present and future generations the histories of cultures. The museum holds for the nation collections of antiquities, prints and drawings, ethnography and coins and medals.
The collections derive from all continents and represent over 10,000 years of human history.