Sculptures are an ulcer on Greek-British relations

Staff place a male head on a frieze at the Acropolis Museum for a ceremony following the repatriation of three sculpture fragments that had been kept at the Vatican Museums for two centuries, in Athens, on March 24. [Petros Giannakouris/AP]

Primary sources hold that had he not died prematurely in Messolongi almost 200 years ago, Lord Byron would have been offered the throne of Greece and ruled the newly established kingdom as its first monarch. It is quite possible that Lord Byron was the King George I that Greece never had. Historically, there are of course other moments when the Greeks and the British cooperated closely and forged a solid alliance, for example, the two great wars of the 20th century. These seem to have been high points in relations between the United Kingdom and Greece. At present, it seems that bilateral relations between the two governments are at their lowest ebb, as Prime Ministers Rishi Sunak and Kyriakos Mitsotakis have fallen out over the return of the Parthenon Marbles. In this way, the marbles remain an ulcer on Greek-British relations.