Our one-eyed, torn-eared black cat Shadow currently has his picture on display in the House of Commons. It’s the right place for him.
The Elgin Marbles are on display in the British Museum. That’s the wrong place for them.
The Commons exhibition celebrates Parliamentary staff and their pets, and as both wife Claire and I work there Shadow qualifies for inclusion.
Though I doubt he ever thought he would end up in the Palace of Westminster when he was rummaging through bins for food as a homeless street cat.
As a result he was a bit battered round the edges when he turned up out of the blue on our doorstep a few years back. He adopted us and never left.
Should the Elgin Marbles be returned to Greece?PAAs for the Elgin Marbles, it’s high time they were back where they belong. You only have to visit the Parthenon in Athens from which the 7th Lord Elgin removed the sculptures between 1801 - 1812 for his own private collection to see why.
There are gaps like missing teeth where they should be. However, if they are returned they would more likely end up in the fantastic Acropolis Museum round the corner to replace the replicas there now.
And there is no way they would not be well cared for - one argument used for not returning them. The Acropolis Museum is perfectly capable of looking after them properly and displaying them to maximum effect.
The legality of Elgin’s original ownership is disputed as the Greeks never got a say in it. The Ottomans were in charge of Athens at the time and his lordship’s deal was with them.
The Tories, of course, are adamant the marbles - or the Parthenon Sculptures as the Greeks prefer to call them - should stay here, bizarrely equating any handover with giving the Chagos Islands back to Mauritius.
Shadow Culture minister Saqib Bhatti said: “Sir Keir Starmer has already capitulated over the Chagos Islands, and now it appears he is set to cave in to the radical left and return the Elgin Marbles to Greece.
"The British Museum has cared for these precious artefacts for generations and given people from around the globe the chance to learn about their tremendous story.”
Don’t be so ridiculous, Saqib. People from around the globe would still be able to see them in the Acropolis Museum, and as for learning about their “tremendous story”, London’s Great Russell Street is hardly a match for the Acropolis as the place to do it.
He might feel differently if the boot was on the other foot and Athens was holding onto a few pillars from Stonehenge.
But this should not be just about marbles, however much shadow ministers seem to be losing theirs.
Stonehenge is a Unesco heritage siteWikipedia CommonsThere should be an international agreement that, in principle, historic cultural artefacts are displayed in the countries where they originated unless there is good reason to move them for their own safety.
This would work both ways. The British Museum might lose some stuff, but they would get a lot back, too.
The Vikings nicked a load of Anglo-Saxon treasures in their raids on Britain and a root round the exhibits at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen and the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm should be able to identify which of that loot belongs to us.
The oldest complete Latin Bible, the Codex Amiatinus, was created by 8th Century Northumbrians but now sits in a Florence museum. We’ll have that back, too.
There are 17 fruity love letters from Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn which ought to be in the British Museum but, instead, are in Rome’s Vatican Library.
There is only one way they could have got there and I wonder if anyone has told Pope Francis he’s handling stolen goods.
We might ask if France should hang onto the 70 metre Bayeux Tapestry given it depicts the most famous battle fought on English soil?
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In the backroom of a small hotel in Taos, New Mexico I found nine D.H. Lawrence paintings which would do the Tate Gallery proud.
They ended up there, near where the novelist temporarily lived, because in 1929 they were ruled too pornographic to be allowed into Britain.
Alongside them were letters the hotel’s Greek owner had written to the British government offering to return the paintings on condition the marbles went to Greece. No dice. Both collections stayed where they were.
Now there is serious consideration being given to resolving this issue, though No10 is staying tight-lipped over what that might be following Keir Starmer’s meeting with Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
An Act of Parliament forbids the British Museum from disposing of its items so a long-term loan seems the most likely outcome.
As for Shadow, he’s staying put. Not even Greeks bearing gifts could persuade us to part with him now.
