Elgin Marbles

Lord Allan of Hallam Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)]

My Lords, I wanted to take part in this debate because I love ancient artefacts—so much so that my career began in ruins, working as a field archaeologist, trowel in hand. Please indulge me; it is panto season. Even now I feel a shiver of excitement at the memory of scraping back the dirt to reveal a sarcophagus lid and then lifting it to find the tomb still occupied in skeletal form. What is special about artefacts is that they conjure up stories when we see, touch or smell them. The sniffing part does not apply to skeletons—that would be weird—but there is nothing like a whiff of old alabaster. It is this story-telling function that I believe should be front of mind when we consider objects such as the Parthenon sculptures, recognising, as the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, said, that location and context are important elements in how they speak to us.

As I have bounced between the British Museum and the new Acropolis Museum, each of which holds around half the surviving Parthenon sculptures, I have felt two quite different narratives emerge from these kindred objects. In London, the story is heavily weighted in favour of their recent history. They speak of 19th-century adventurers, of the neoclassical London architecture they influenced, of a Britain that prized Latin and Greek education above all else, and of a world of comparative cultural and artistic studies. In Athens, the story is very much one of them as integral architectural features of the Parthenon building that you can see from the gallery, of their position relative to other layers of Greek archaeology and of their representation of classical Athenian culture. One of the most powerful differences is in their positioning. The Duveen Gallery has them facing inwards while the new Acropolis Museum has them turned outwards, replicating their original arrangement on the Parthenon. They are, quite literally, introverted in London and extroverted in Athens.

I hope we can recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, set out, that each of these stories is interesting and valuable, and do not allow a lack of imagination to cause us to dismiss either of them out of hand. My personal preference, as my tone may have given away, is for the Athenian story, so I wish to see the entire set of sculptures together in the new Acropolis Museum. But I recognise that this would represent a loss to those who favour the London narrative, if they can no longer drop into the British Museum for a fix of their own preferred kind of classical inspiration.

Artefacts also add new elements to their stories over time; this is especially true for the Parthenon sculptures. As well as Lord Elgin himself, their story now includes Melina Mercouri, who kicked off that campaign 40 years ago, and Eleni Cubitt, who ran the UK campaign for their return over many years. Our current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has now become part of the story; George Osborne may be an even bigger figure if he leads the trustees to agree to some form of display in Athens. It is certainly my hope that we will find a way to have the entire set of sculptures singing their story out from the new Acropolis Museum, while the British Museum continues to tell its rich stories through other fabulous Greek objects from its own collection or from loans.

Our Prime Minister recently issued a clarion call for politicians not to feel bound by others’ past decisions, but rather to be willing to make

“long-term decisions for a brighter future”.

That question now sits in front of the British Museum trustees. If it seems better for the next chapter of the sculptures’ story to be set in Athens, I hope we can enable that to happen.

I invite the Minister to give an aesthetic opinion, as well as the legalistic ones that I suspect he has in his notes. It would be helpful for the House to know the personal preference of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, for Parthenon placement.