Diary page of The Spectator, 11 March 2023, George Osborne wrotes:
The Elgin Marbles have always been controversial. Some, like that great Romantic poet Lord Byron, thought they should never have left Greece; but at the British Museum they have been admired by tens of millions of people and I believe they play a vital role in telling the complete story of our common humanity. We trustees are exploring with the Greeks whether there’s a way to solve this 200-year-old dispute so that the sculptures can be seen both in London and Athens, while treasures currently in Greece could be seen by new audiences here. We may succeed, or we may not, but it’s worth trying. I read this week that that other great romantic, Boris Johnson, is worried about it. Surely that can’t be the same Boris who once wrote a column saying that ‘the reasons for taking the Marbles were good. The reasons for handing them back are better still. The Elgin Marbles should leave this northern whisky-drinking guilt culture, and be displayed where they belong: in a country of bright sunlight and the landscape of Achilles, “the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea”’? There must be two Borises.
Read this in The Spectator, 11 March 2023, Diary, page 9.
We would add, that tens of millions of visitors can also see the surviving Parthenon Marbles in the superlative Acropolis Museum, in Athens. A purpose-built state of the art museum which opened on 20 June 2009. The top floor, glass walled Parthenon Gallery, displays the surviving sculptures not removed by Lord Elgin's men at the start of the 19th century when Greece had no voice, and offers direct views to the Parthenon, which still stands.
The Parthenon Gallery in the Acropolis Museum is the one place on earth where it is possible to have a single and aesthetic experience simultaneously of the Parthenon and its sculptures.
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