Baroness Tessa Blackstone is the chairman of the British Library board. A Labour MP in the House of Lords, she has been a minister of education and culture, a professor at the London School of Economics and vice-chancellor of the University of Greenwich. On Friday morning, the 73-year-old life peer who is always ready for a good game of tennis, spoke to Metro at The Bengal Club.

Welcome to Calcutta. What brings you here?

Well, I came to India on March 17. First I was in Delhi, where I attended exhibitions on the history and development of the Parsi community in India put on by the National Museum, the National Gallery of Modern Art, and the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. On Saturday, I attended the grand launch of the Everlasting Flame programme in Parliament, where the finance minister (Arun Jaitley) was the main speaker. I then had a short stay in Chandigarh. I met the minister of culture and visited a small privately run digital library. I also paid homage to one of my architectural heroes, Le Corbusier. [The pioneering Swiss-French architect and modern urban planner prepared the masterplan for Chandigarh. The baroness has been on the board of trustees of The Architecture Foundation in the UK.] And we arrived in Calcutta late on Wednesday.

On Thursday you visited Jadavpur University...

Yes, we are collaborating with the university on various projects, including Two Centuries of Indian Print, which is a very important part of our visit. The British Library has a huge collection of Indian books printed between about 1720 and 1914. We have to stop there because copyright comes into play from then on. It was a very positive meeting. I think it'll be an excellent collaboration. I'm delighted that it is taking place.

Tell us a bit more about the Two Centuries of Indian Print project...

We have 500,000 items in South Asian languages. This includes the so-called proscribed publications - pamphlets and posters that were banned by the British government leading up to Independence. Then 23,000 manuscripts in South Asian languages, of which the largest collection is in Sanskrit.... We also have very finely illustrated ancient religious texts, 1,000 Urdu manuscripts... 2,500 Sinhalese manuscripts, more than 40,000 paintings and drawings and 250,000 photographs from South Asia. That apart, there are 40,000 maps of South Asia. So, it's an enormous documentary history, literary history and social and cultural history of India. It really is our ambition to try to make them available here by digitising them.

One of the main hurdles to linking the resources of various libraries is the absence of a uniform standard in digitisation... is the British Library working on developing a standard?

That's true, about the need for a uniform standard. The British Library is going to run some workshops in this area. I think these might be quite constructive and supportive in getting a more consistent standard right across India. The British Library has done a lot of work in this area and has a real commitment to quality. It has been suggested that may be some digitisation of our material could be done here, but I think that would be difficult while there's such diverse quality and standards.

With digitised materials, do you think all libraries should open up and allow offshore access to its resources?

That's the whole purpose of it! We really want this material that we have in London to be readily available and accessible here in India and indeed in other South Asian countries. I don't think it's right that people have to get up on an airplane and come all the way to London to see this material. So it's very important that we should do something for Indian students, academics, research scholars and I want to make that contribution, I feel very passionate about it. We've been given a grant of £600,000 from the UK government to start this project but we have to raise more money here, so we hope that foundations and philanthropic donors will be prepared to help us.... There is a bit of a hurdle we have to leap somehow because there are regulations about spending charitable funds from foundations overseas... we'll have to see whether the Indian government will make an exception for this.

You've led such a distinguished life, from academics to politics, education to architecture, then the library, even a hospital trust... how did you manage to do so much?

(Smiles) Well, I am a bit of a workaholic. I enjoy being involved in a range of projects and all my life I've tried to do more than one thing at a time, and get organised to do that, because I like the richness that this diversity brings me.

I started life as an academic. I was a young lecturer at the London School of Economics. And then I got drawn into working in more public roles. I started as a young adviser in the Cabinet Office a long time ago. I moved back to academia... then into full-time politics, where I served as minister in two departments - education and culture. And then back to the universities....

Now I have a portfolio of different things, of which the British Library is one of my main activities. I also chair the board of a top children's hospital in Europe, the Great Ormond Street Hospital (London). I do a few other things... I sit on the select committee on economic affairs... I am very interested in the wider world. I was the foreign affairs spokesman in the Lords in Opposition, so travel has always been something I have enjoyed. I'm always curious about other countries. And I particularly love being in India.

Have you been here often?

Many times. I first came here in 1973, and have been coming ever since. It's always a pleasure to be in India and I find my Indian friends and colleagues enormously warm and interesting and enjoyable to spend time with.

Have you travelled around?

Yes, I have travelled widely in India. I've been to Calcutta earlier too. But I've not been to the Northeast part of India very much. I want to come back and may be go to Sikkim and Assam and other nearby places... Darjeeling, I'd love to go there. On Sunday, I'll drive out of the city for a homestay on the outskirts of Krishnagar town. I'll get a feel of the West Bengal countryside.... I'm really looking forward to this.

Do you keep an eye on Indian politics?

Yes I do, of course, because I am interested in India. But I don't feel that I am sufficiently well informed about what is happening here to be able to comment with confidence about the changes that are taking place. I know that economic growth is quite high here and I want to see prosperity in India. If I had a wish for India it would be that the gap between the rich and the poor be narrowed. I am after all a Labour peer (smiles).

You are in Calcutta in World Cup week; do you follow cricket?

(Laughs) Well, I'm a big fan of tennis, first of all. I play a lot of tennis. So I was delighted last night to visit Naresh Kumar and his very nice, charming wife (Sunita). I met Leander Paes a couple of years ago when he was playing the doubles in the ATP tournament. And I am a football fan. I am an Arsenal fan because I live not very far from Arsenal and my son and my son-in-law and my grandsons are very passionate.

I follow cricket a little bit. So, I know there was a very exciting match the night before last when India beat Bangladesh by one run, off the last ball! I was at the airport and there were people, both when we left Chandigarh and when we arrived in Calcutta, crowded around the television screens... I like that, it's great, it brings together the Commonwealth, because all the Commonwealth countries are cricket-playing countries, going back to our joint history.

What about books?

I'm a huge reader. I'm reading a book by William Dalrymple called Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India, which I am enjoying very much. I've also bought [Rohinton] Mistry's great novel - A Fine Balance. I'm almost done with the Dalrymple book, so I will be reading Mistry while I am in the Bengal countryside.

We love your sense of style; given your lineage how much do you follow fashion trends?

Well, I wouldn't say that I am a fanatical follower of fashion (laughs) but my mother always said to me, 'You have to be well-turned-out.' That was the phrase she used, it was a very 1930s expression. And since for a short time she was an actress and then for a short time lived in Paris, where she was a model for Charles Worth who was a couturier... this was just before the Second World War... so may be I inherited a bit of interest in clothes from her (smiles).

I always buy some Indian things when I come here. Sometimes I buy tablecloths and napkins in lovely fabrics, sometimes nice Indian blouses... I have quite an Indian collection in my cupboard. But I've never worn a sari, because I think western women in saris don't look right, we don't know how to carry them and walk in them... it looks a bit strange (laughs).