As Greece counts 200 years since the beginning of its war of independence in 1821, we can all celebrate the spirit of defiance against tyranny and a dedication to freedom, democracy and human rights. The Iliad-literate prime minister, Boris Johnson, has called Greece’s unique brand of meritocratic indignation the “hallmark of Greek genius”. But what made the Greek Revolution truly exceptional was that from the outset, it was never a matter for the Greeks alone.

The pan-European solidarity expressed at the time of the revolution marked the birth of a strong current of philhellenism that endures to this day. Few embody this better than Lord Byron, whose love letters to Greece paid stunning tribute to the place “where grew the arts of war and peace”. With words that speak down the ages, it is little wonder that he continues to be honoured in Greece, including today on Lord Byron Day.

The Prince of Walesrecently said that without Greece our laws, art and way of life would never have flourished. But without Britain, they would not have survived the test of time. I couldn’t agree more. From the Greek struggle for independence to the two world wars and recent Greek history, the relations between the United Kingdom and Greece are not simply ties between nation states but between people with a shared commitment to freedom, equality, democracy and respect for human dignity. My own personal ties to the UK date back to my student days at the London School of Economics and I have been an enthusiastic Anglophile ever since.

I am also a firm believer in keeping alive our common cultural heritage and educating the generations to come. This year the Benaki Museum in Athens has organised the most comprehensive exhibition of Modern Greek history ever seen. Among a thousand objects sits a portrait of Lord Byron by Thomas Phillips, on loan from the National Portrait Gallery in London. The loan of cultural objects is an important gesture from one country to another but this is also an opportunity to educate the public about the enduring bond between our two countries and to give Lord Byron his rightful place in the Greek story.

Cultural heritage teaches us where we come from, where we have been and helps us understand who we are today. Modern Greece has Lord Byron to thank for this. I also have no doubt this is why Lord Byron informed his mother from Prevesa that he would be returning to Athens, later prolonging his Hellenic journey indefinitely. Here was an English peer with an undeniable thirst to consume Greece in its entirety, from the ancient walls of the Parthenon to the modern Greek we speak today. If he believed that understanding Greece’s cultural heritage held the keys to modern society’s own existence, he would not have been the only one.

As the European Commission’s vice-president for promoting the European way of life, I can relate to Lord Byron’s commitment to the preservation and promotion of cultural heritage (unfortunately not to his poetic genius). It is why I will also be visiting the Benaki Museum’s exhibition at every chance I get, to see the portrait of Lord Byron and the many other pieces on loan from private collections and important museums across Europe.

The bicentenary of Lord Byron’s death at Missolonghi will fall on April 19 2024. What better a time for the United Kingdom and Greece to honour the friendship between the two nations and their people than by marking it with further cultural exchanges befitting of his memory. In these difficult times, cultural heritage should uplift humanity, not divide it.

Margaritis Schinas is vice-president of the European Commission, this article was first published in The Times

Boris Johnson says ‘2021 is a significant year for Greece and a very exciting year for Britain to be invigorating our relationship with the Greek people’. If only. If only that good brain of his endowed with an impeccable classical education would dare to think outside the boring old box. Go on, Boris, reinvigorate the relationship with the one thing that would do it instantly: give back those Parthenon marbles. The old refrain that they were legally acquired is an invention, a factoid; say something often enough and people begin to believe it. Boris is a master of that sort of sell. There never was any proof of permission to export those figures, and the laws of the time have become inappropriate and dated. These sculptures represent the very heart and soul of Periclean Greece and so of the modern Greek state. The Ottomans are long gone. After 200 years the Marbles have done their job of enlightening and civilising the peoples of the West. The British Trustees do not own them they hold them in Trust, and to decide that the Greek people should in their celebratory year of 2021 have a chance to bathe in the aura of the originals would be a magnificent, and wholly decent gesture on their part. Those figures so brutally detached from the building still soaring above Athens, should be back where they belong, in sight of the Parthenon itself. A beautiful museum awaits them.

Janet Suzman, Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles 

 Now is the time, now is the hour, Prime Minister Johnson, to show that you are a true philhellene. That you truly respect not only what the brave Greeks of 1821 and following accomplished, against huge odds, in the name of liberty, but also what the Hellenes of the 5th century BCE achieved in creating a culture and a civilisation that has been an example and model to the world in the 25 centuries since. Consider what Pheidias, master-craftsman and master-designer, and architects Ictinus and Callicrates, would think if they knew that their masterpiece, the Parthenon, had been torn apart and kept apart - not only by a gunpowder explosion in the heat of battle with Venetians long, long ago but by British hands and minds, from the 7th Lord Elgin to the current Trustees of the British Museum even today. Do your duty by the Greeks, would-be philhellene PM Johnson! Reunify.

Professor Paul Cartledge, Vice-Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM) and the International Association (IARPS)

 ‘Our Prime Minister’s comments are very disappointing. He talks of friendship and cooperation with our European friends and claims that the Parthenon marbles were obtained legally. But the permit for their removal from Athens was granted by the occupying Ottoman forces and the Greeks themselves had no say in the matter.

I believe that works of art should not be returned to their country of origin save in the most exceptional of circumstances. In the case of the marbles their ownership is doubtful to say the least, the British Museum only has some of them and there is a rightful place for them at the Acropolis Museum where the surviving sculptures could be displayed in their entirety. If we are not prepared to return them permanently could we at least lend then to the Parthenon for the 2021 celebrations.’

Lord Alf Dubs, Labour Life peer