My complete lack of interest in matters of history of most kinds has long been a source of frustration to my long-suffering partner. Truth be known, it has been driving her mad since we first became an item in late 1989. I can’t help it. No matter how old and apparently interesting something is, I struggle to be even vaguely interested. “That building was built by Benedictine Monks in Benedictine times and it took 10,000 men to blah blah blah …” I will hear until the commentary simply becomes noise.
I cannot explain to you in intellectual terms why I am so uninterested, so incurious. The three principals in my time of growing-up were my mother and parental grandparents and as I recall none had the remotest interest in the history of anything. If they did, they never mentioned it to me. My father certainly did, but unfortunately for me he and my mother split up when I was too young to know he had ever been there at all, so until I was older, which is to say into adulthood, history was always something other people were interested in, but never me.
A vivid example of my ignorance and incuriosity came when we made regular visits to the sunshiney Greek island of Corfu. A favourite activity of mine was to travel to Kanoni, near to where the late Queen’s fella Prince Phillip was born in a place called Mon Repos. My partner was always keen to visit while all I wanted to do was to watch planes take off and land on the airport runway just along the road from a vantage point high above the airport. One day, she had finally had enough, went off for a solo trip around Big Phil’s birthplace while I watched the planes roar past. We were both happy.
How we have remained in the same household is probably a miracle in itself. On the other hand, perhaps our wildly varying interests, which have hardly come together during the ensuing years, have played a role in keeping us together, as much as love itself, because there far more we amicably disagree on than share.
I read an article in today’s Guardian by the Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in which he calls for the return to Athens of the Parthenon Sculptures. The what, I thought? It was only when I got into the piece where I realised old Kyriakos was talking about the Elgin Marbles. Now, allow me to let you in on a secret.
Until very recently, I had no idea what the so-called Elgin Marbles were and assumed they were a form of marbles, like the ones we used to play with at school. I am not making this up. I was utterly baffled why mere marbles could cause such a fuss. They’re just marbles, aren’t they? Couldn’t the Greeks just buy some more. I mean, a marble is just a marble, isn’t it? Clearly, as you can see from this explanation, they are much more than that.
My view on the Parthenon Sculptures/Elgin Marbles is very straightforward: if they belong to Greece, return the bloody things to Athens and let’s have done with them. Given that Elgin and his pals physically chipped the marbles from their moorings (I am not an expert on marbles or sculptures) without permission – Elgin disputed that fact, but he is way too dead to argue about it now) – and flogged them to the British Museum, this strikes me as a dodgy financial transaction and nothing else. If we allow the marbles to return ‘home’, then what’s the worst that can happen?
It is not as if we are in the 1980s when the only flights to Greece would have been a small number from London’s major airports. Nowadays, you can get flights from most regional airports which will normally cost less than, for example, a train from Bristol to London Airport. Seriously, though: if the sculptures/marbles aren’t ours – and as an admitted ignoramus I cannot imagine for a moment how they could be – then frankly we have no right to keep them.
I lost my marbles many years ago and now it’s time for the British Museum to lose theirs. And why not replace them with Marbula One, which to me is far more interesting and exciting?
