‘For the Greeks, it feels like a gaping wound,’ says Sarah Baxter, a columnist at the Sunday Times, of the Elgin Marbles. For 200 years, the Parthenon sculptures have taken pride of place at the British Museum. The Greeks want them back, but their pleas have fallen on deaf ears.
Greece’s prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis says he thinks Britain is edging closer to finally accepting that the marbles should be returned. ‘It will be a fantastic gesture, and that’s what I’ll tell (Liz Truss),’ he said of the return of the 2,500-year-old sculptures. But will he have any more success than his predecessors?
Lord Vaizey, former culture minister, thinks it is time to listen to Mitsotakis. Speaking at a Spectator fringe event at Tory party conference, he says it’s clear that the ‘moral case’ for their return is ‘absolutely unarguable’.
‘The Parthenon sculptures belong in the Parthenon…The logistical case (for their return) is also unanswerable: the museum in Greece is a world-class museum,’ he says.
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