I’ve long argued (not too subtly, I grant you) that it’s the cold, dead hand of the British Establishment that is the main impediment to any resolution of the Parthenon Marbles issue. The British Museum Act of 1963 remains the great immoveable object and requires repealing or amending for any progress to happen. While the Tories are in power that seems vanishingly unlikely.
This became abundantly clear again this past week when a comment piece by Emily Sheffield appeared in the London Evening Standard, a ‘newspaper’ owned since 2009 by the Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev (Lord Lebedev after being ennobled by his chum Boris Johnson).
In 2017, Lebedev appointed Johnson’s Eton and Oxford buddy (and David Cameron’s former Chancellor of the Exchequer) George ‘Austerity’ Osborne as editor. Osborne only lasted a couple of years before leaving for more lucrative pastures (the list of his well-remunerated City positions is as long as the Parthenon frieze).
Who took his place in the editor’s chair? Why Emily Sheffield, of course — sister of Samantha Cameron, the wife of former Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, another Eton and Oxford-educated chum of Osborne and Johnson.
Sheffield didn’t last long as Standard editor. Unlike Osborne, who inexplicably was appointed chairman of the trustees of the British Museum, La Sheffield subsequently satisfied herself with penning the occasional think-piece for her old organ and joining the ghastly Piers Morgan on the Murdoch-owned TalkTV.
Given her family connections to the Eton and Oxbridge Tory clique (her parents are members of the land-owning British gratin), it was no surprise that she chose to hack out a few hundred banal and ill-considered words on why the Parthenon Marbles should stay in London. This in the very week that it became clear that Osborne’s much vaunted “deal” with the Greeks to return the Marbles to Athens was just another tranche of Bullingdon bullshit. He ought to have kept his powder dry until the traditionally entrenched “red lines” separating the two sides had been properly and amicably resolved.
But what really sticks in the craw is not Sheffield’s basic misunderstanding of the issues surrounding Elgin’s desecration of the temple, but utterances like this: “Our ownership has even put pressure on the Greeks to finally build their own beautiful museum.”
Clearly she never visited the old Acropolis Museum on the monument. Anyone who did will know that it was only a matter of time before a new home was built to accommodate the numerous treasures it held. “Our ownership” is a provocative phrase designed to sustain the erroneous idea that Britain has legal title to the sculptures. Ethics be damned, it seems (another entrenched Tory tendency).
Meanwhile, “the onus is on the Greeks to gain our trust if they are to be loaned.” Loaned? The temerity of the British Establishment takes the breath away. You cannot loan something to the person from whom you stole it.
If all her ignorant bloviating were not enough, Sheffield concludes with this: “I’m sorry, dear Greeks, but the Elgins remain here.”
“The Elgins?” What the hell are they? Perhaps Ms Sheffield has been smoking the cannabis that occasioned her expulsion from the élite Marlborough College public school?
“The Elgins”? I almost choked on my moussaka.
Tom Flynn
Partner at Flynn & Giovani Art Provenance Research
