The assortment of Snodgrasses and Ponsonbys who make up the British Committee for the Restitution of the Elgin Marbles have launched yet another chapter of their long campaign to return the fragmented statues to Greece. How very appropriate, they argue, if the arrival of the marbles were to coincide with that of the Olympic flame later this summer. That is, presumably, assuming the Greek authorities get their finger out and manage to finish the Athens stadium in time; sending the marbles to Seoul, which has offered itself as a back-up location, would seem a little odd.
Were the committee’s campaign modelled around the idea of sending Greeks back to Greece, along with their restaurants, oily kebabs and unpalatable retsina, it would quite rightly be reviled as ethnic cleansing. Cultural cleansing, on the other hand, is the fashion of the day.
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