“There is no one in the British cultural world more single-minded, more monkishly devoted to the arts as a civic and public necessity, more able to bend events to his will. … When he arrived at the Tate in September 1988, it was an affectionately regarded and faintly parochial museum; he left it earlier this month one of the most powerful forces in the international art world.” In a Guardian Long Read, Charlotte Higgins looks at Serota’s career as he moves on to lead Arts Council England, the country’s cultural funding body.