From the Library: The Parthenon Marbles Should Be Returned To Athens

Intelligence Squared

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🗓️ 30 December 2015

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

What’s all this nonsense about sending the Parthenon Marbles back to Greece? If Lord Elgin hadn’t rescued them from the Parthenon in Athens and presented them to the British Museum almost 200 years ago, these exquisite sculptures – the finest embodiment of the classical ideal of beauty and harmony – would have been lost to the ravages of pollution and time. So we have every right to keep them: indeed, returning them would set a dangerous precedent, setting off a clamour for every Egyptian mummy and Grecian urn to be wrenched from the world’s museums and sent back to its country of origin. It is great institutions like the British Museum that have established such artefacts as items of world significance: more people see the Marbles in the BM than visit Athens every year. Why send them back to relative obscurity? But aren’t such arguments a little too imperialistic? All this talk of visitor numbers and dangerous precedents – doesn’t it just sound like an excuse for Britain to hold on to dubiously acquired... Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this Intelligence Square podcast.
0:03.3	For more information on our debates, talks and discussions,
0:06.5	visit Intelligence Square.com and sign up to the newsletter.
0:09.9	Hello, I'm Zena Boudin, we welcome to this Intelligence Square debate coming to you from
0:15.5	Keduggen Hall in Central London.
0:18.0	We have a very contentious issue for you today.
0:20.8	Our motion is send them back the The Parthen and Marbles should be returned to Athens. Now, as I'm sure most of you know, the Parthen and
0:29.2	Marbles are those classical Greek sculptures that once adorned the Parthen and Temple in Athens, sometimes known as the Elgin
0:36.0	Marbles. Well, for 200 years they have enjoyed pride of place at the British Museum in London.
0:42.0	Is it time to send them back or should they stay where they are?
0:45.8	Well we have four speakers. We're going to be debating our motion. For the motion,
0:49.7	British MP Andrew George and also broadcaster Stephen Frein arguing against the motion
0:55.2	British MP and historian Tristram Hunt and Professor of History, Felipe Fernandez-Armeso.
1:00.4	That is our panel. Welcome to you all.
1:03.0	I'm going to you all.
1:05.0	I tell you what's going to be happening.
1:12.0	I'll tell you what's going to be happening. Our speakers are all going to be
1:15.4	making their case to you and then I'm going to throw the debate open to the
1:19.4	floor and our audience were actually polled as they were coming in to see where they stand on this motion.
1:25.8	And at the end of our debate, we're going to ask our audience to vote again to see if any opinions have shifted.
1:32.0	So, first of all, our first speaker, the Liberal Democrat
1:35.6	MP Andrew George who is also chairman of Marbles reunited, which is a
	...

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