UK's King Charles III wore a tie adorned with Greek flags to COP28 in Dubai after this week’s Parthenon Marbles diplomatic faux pas by the UK Prime Minister.

We loved it, as did the media around the globe - and for those interested in purchasing a similar tie or scarf, worth noting that the shop is very near the British Embassy in Athens. 

Our Vice-Chair, Professor Paul Cartledge has a Thalassa tie but the design on his tie embraces the letters of the Greek alphabet.

The British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles member Tessa Dunlop took to X yesterday asking for a caption to the photo of the King talking to PM Sunak: "King Charles in a tie sporting the Greek flag. Is he trolling his own PM @BCRPM ?! Captions please! "

And we dutifully found a 2009 quote by the then Prince Charles at a climate conference in Copenhagen, when he said: "Just as mankind had the power to push the world to the brink so, too, do we have the power to bring it back into balance.”

Here's to PM Sunak finding a way to rebalance the disappointing diplomatic faux pas of this week, and a good place to start would be to understand why Greece has been courteously asking for the reunification of these specific sculptures, and for so many decades!

November 27th will be remembered as a dark night in Anglo-Greek relations, but we know we've still plenty of friends in Greece, and can assure Greece that the campaign in the UK isn't over (yet).

These peerless sculptures will one day be reunited with their other halves in the superlative Acropolis Museum, in Athens.

In Janet Suzman's words, spoken at the Athens conference on reunification, which took place in April 2019: "La Luta continua."✊

In TA NEA today, an article by Yannis Andritsopoulos, UK corresondent.

Below quote from two exceptional supporters in the UK House of Lords, exceptional because of their support for our campaign too.

“I believe Rishi Sunak's decision to cancel the meeting with the Greek PM was shocking and discourteous. It was embarrassing for the UK to be behaving like a small child,” Alf Dubs, the veteran Labour peer, said.

He added: “I hope we can repair UK relations with Greece, maybe we'll need a Labour government to do that. I believe the Marbles should be returned, maybe on a long-term loan if necessary.”

"The adolescent petulance of cancelling the Greek premier is unworthy of any aspiring statesman. Contrast Mr Sunak’s cringe-worthy job interview with Elon Musk and our Prime Minister’s leadership looks even more erratic,” said Shami Chakrabarti, the Labour peer and former shadow attorney general for England and Wales.

“One minute he hosts international summits on Advanced Intelligence; the next he spurns so-called foreign courts in both London and Strasbourg over his treatment of refugees. Basic intelligence suggests Britain needs friends not enemies. We need cultural exchange not culture war,” added Baroness Shami Chakrabarti, who is a member of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM).

“A Labour Government should strive to reunite the Parthenon Sculptures in their beautiful Athenian home,” she said.

The British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles are grateful to both Alf and Shami for their continued support to this cause, and our campaigning.

On Sunday a flurry of reports from Reuters, and other media outlets to highlight the possibility of an agreement bewteen Greece and UK that could sidestep the need to amend the UK's British Museum Act 1963, in order to facilitate the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles.

On Monday, UK's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, stated in the Guardian that as the British Museum collection is funded by taxpayers and protected by law, the portion of the Parthenon Marbles in Bloomsbury, would remain in the UK.

Read the full article by Aubrey Allegretti in the Guardian.

“The UK has cared for the Elgin marbles for generations,” Sunak said. “Our galleries and museums are funded by taxpayers because they are a huge asset to this country."

A UK factoid: what about the way in which the sculptures that Lord Elgin's men deployed to remove the  best pieces, destined to decorate his ancestral home, or the  cleaning in 1938-1939?

“We share their treasures with the world, and the world comes to the UK to see them. The collection of the British Museum is protected by law, and we have no plans to change it.”

Sharing Greece's treasures is not the issue, as there are over 100,000 Greek artefacts in the British Museum. The Parthenon Marbles are specific sculptures, fragmented, and  the pieces that survive are mainly divided between Athens and London.

Greece has always, and only asked for the reunification of the sculptures from the Parthenon. Greece has also offered other Greek artefacts not seen outside of Greece for the British Museum's Room 18.

This story was also reported in Reuters, ARTnews,the Evening Standard, the Greek Reporter and many more.