The Times has covered every possible angle not only of PM Sunak's refusal to meet PM Mitsotakis but of the response by Gillian Keegan, the education secretary on ITV. Tom Peck in his article [Keegan the Elgin mangler comes bearing gaffes] refers to Gillian Keegan's '30-second video clip on the lunchtime news' as constituting 'almost the entirety of public government comment on the subject'. Sigh, and deeper sigh.
"One of the more spurious points that is regularly made is that in their home in the British Museum in the global city of London, more tourists are able to visit the Elgin Marbles than if they were sent back to the provincial backwater of Athens." Writes Tom Peck in the article published on Wednesday 29 November, which deserves to be read in its entirety. The tragedy of a UK government standpoint, which does not help this nations position amongst those of all other nations.
The day before this, and also in The Times, the third Leading article on page 31 was aptly entitled Greek Gifts:
The Elgin Marbles should be put on display in their natural habitat
Splitting the Parthenon Marbles between Greece and the British Museum is like cutting the Mona Lisa in half, according to Kyriakos Mitsotakis, that country’s eloquent prime minister. Yesterday he made his case to Sir Keir Starmer, a politician more commonly associated with the work of Sisyphus, and he had hoped to buttonhole Rishi Sunak today for the return of the Elgin Marbles to Athens until their meeting was cancelled.
It’s a tricky problem and the British prime minister could seek guidance from the classicist Boris Johnson. But Mr Sunak would soon end up losing his own marbles. As president of the Oxford Union in 1986 Mr Johnson offered Melina Mercouri, the actress turned culture minister, a platform to lobby for the return of the Parthenon frieze. By last year, he had changed his tune: “Those gods and heroes came to our country in 1812 as refugees from the Ottoman kiln,” he declared. “They were going to be melted down to make cement.”
Mr Johnson has become a Retainer. His argument is that Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman empire, was not an imperial plunderer.
His second argument persists too. If you surrender the marbles to Greece, what about the theoretical claims from Egypt and Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Nigeria. What would be left of that magnificent museum in Bloomsbury? As prime minister, Liz Truss followed these arguments.
Mr Sunak should not. This should not be about ownership but about where one can best appreciate the marbles, those in Athens and those in the British Museum. They belong together as an artistic whole and they belong in their natural habitat.
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