Prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis makes pitch for pragmatic deal to end historic battle over Elgin treasures To Greece’s delight, a bust of Pericles now graces 10 Downing Street. Within hours of assuming office as prime minister, Boris Johnson had placed a plaster likeness of the Athenian soldier-statesman, whom he has long admired, on his desk. Johnson’s knowledge of the ancient world – he studied classics at Oxford and once boasted that he could recite the first 100 lines of Homer’s _Iliad_– is regarded with awe in modern Greece. But that affinity will soon be tested in the run-up to Greece’s bicentennial independence celebrations, when Athens steps up its campaign to win back from the British Museum the Parthenon sculptures that once adorned Pericles’s masterpiece. Continue reading...
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