6 August 2024. By Nigel for the Daily Express.

None of the reasons for returning to Athens the sculptures known as the ‘Elgin Marbles’ adds up. The historical reason – theft – is untrue. The sculptures originally adorned the Parthenon, which was used by the Ottomans as a military base for centuries. In 1687 a gunpowder store there exploded, destroying part of the building.

The authorities cared so little that the debris still littered the ground more than a century later when Lord Elgin’s agents arrived on the scene. Elgin had secured from the highest official in Constantinople authorisation to remove ‘any pieces of stone with old inscriptions, and figures’.