Bearing in mind many of his other opinions, many would not expect Peter Hitchens to be in favour of the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece. Those who have followed the issue though will know that it is in fact pretty much the only issue that he & he brother Christopher agreed on.

Here he once again reiterates his view that they should be returned to Greece.

Peter Hitchens

From:
Daily Mail

PETER HITCHENS: So how long will it be before we invite the IS jihadis to a white-tie dinner?
By Peter Hitchens for The Mail on Sunday
Published: 00:01, 19 October 2014 | Updated: 10:33, 19 October 2014

[…]

Mrs Clooney is right: we have to lose our Marbles

I back Amal Clooney in her battle to get the Elgin Marbles sent back to their home in Athens.

We rescued them from the Ottomans. We’ve guarded them well. But now their home is safe again, and we have had them for long enough.
Read the rest of this entry »

More coverage of yesterday’s article by Henry Porter, on why he thinks that Britain needs to reconsider their stance on the issue of the restitution of the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum.

From:
Kathimerini (English Edition)

Monday May 21, 2012
Ritual reignites Marbles debate

A few days after Greece handed the Olympic Flame to Britain, which is hosting the Olympic Games in July, another eminent Briton joined the chorus of those calling for the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum.

In an article in Sunday’s Observer, veteran journalist Henry Porter called on Britons to look beyond Greece’s economic crisis and consider Western civilization’s debt to the country. “I am suggesting that in the light of everything Western civilization owes Greece — in terms of democratic ideas, the Olympics, science, art and architecture — we should begin to address a simple truth: The Parthenon Marbles are not ours to keep,” Porter wrote in the piece titled “The Greeks gave us the Olympics. Let them have their marbles.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Following the death of Christopher Hitchens, an article on the Malathronas blog looks particularly at how strongly he put forward the arguments for the reunification of all the surviving Parthenon Sculptures in Athens.

You can view this article here.

More coverage of Stephen Fry’s article on why he believes that the Parthenon Sculptures should be returned to Greece.

From:
Greek Reporter

Stephen Fry Supports the Return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece
By Stella Tsolakidou on December 24, 2011

Stephen Fry is known for his philhellenic ideas. His latest demonstration of those was his December 19 article, in which he asked from the British PM to return the Parthenon Marbles to their rightful owner: Greece.

Fry begins his article with the title “A moderate proposal” and introduces his idea both as a tribute to life for the also known philhellene Christopher Hitchens, who passed away one week ago, and as a supportive action towards Britain’s good friends (the Greeks) who are currently going through harsh times.
Read the rest of this entry »

The British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles have published a tribute to the journalist & author Christopher Hitchens, who was a long standing supporter of the campaign to return the Elgin Marbles to Athens.

From:
Sourcewire

Tribute to the late Christopher Hitchens from the BCRPM
Friday, 16 December 2011

The British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM) today paid tribute to the late Christopher Hitchens who died earlier this week, for his keen support for the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece.

Eleni Cubitt, Honorary Secretary for the Committee said: “We are all deeply saddened by the news of Christopher’s death and we send our sincere condolences to his family at this time. Christopher’s contribution and belief in our cause was a great strength to me personally and he will be sorely missed as one of our key supporters.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Following Christopher Hitchens death, Stephen Fry talks about why he now thinks that the time is now right for the Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum to return to Athens.

From:
StephenFry.com

A Modest Proposal
By Stephen Fry
December 19th, 2011

Greece is the Word

I have a modest proposal that might simultaneously celebrate the life of Christopher Hitchens, strengthen Britain’s low stock in Europe and allow us to help a dear friend in terrible trouble.

Perhaps the most beautiful and famous monument in the world is the Doric masterpiece atop the citadel, or Acropolis, of Athens. It is called the Parthenon, the Virgin Temple dedicated to Pallas Athene, the goddess of wisdom who gave the Greek capital its name.
Read the rest of this entry »

In the mid 1980s, when interest in the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles was not as high as it is now, Christopher Hitchens chose to write his second book about the Parthenon Marbles – and why he thought that they should be returned to Greece. This book still is perhaps the text that most eloquently summarises the arguments for the return of the sculptures & refutes those against. It has since been reprinted in three different editions, each time summarising the current status of the case, with introductory passages written by various others involved with the campaign.

His book was the first thing that I read when researching the design of the New Acropolis Museum – which led to my interest in the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles ever since then.

Particularly in his later works, I disagreed with much of what Hitch wrote, but in other cases, his clear understanding of the arguments led me to change my own mind on subjects. Throughout his life though, he steadfastly maintained his assertions that the Parthenon Sculptures should be returned to Greece.

Farewell Christopher, you will be missed.

(Interestingly, I notice that the Reuters obituary was written by Sharon Waxman – herself an author of a book on disputed artefacts in museums)

From:
Reuters

Christopher Hitchens: A salute to intellectual honesty
By Sharon Waxman
Sun Dec 18, 2011 2:42pm EST

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Nothing sharpened Christopher Hitchens’ mind like cancer.

He wrote the best, most piercing, most clarifying prose of his career as he faced down the specter of his own demise.

As he dealt with fatigue and nausea, with the anger, disgust and frustration that must accompany what he knew was a death sentence, Hitch poured it all into words that were as painfully honest as they were hilarious.
Read the rest of this entry »

For many years, one of the excuses for the British Museum’s retention of the Parthenon Sculptures was that there was no suitable place in Greece to put them. This has now been solved by the completed Acropolis Museum which continues to receive overwhelmingly positive reviews.

From:
National Post

Saturday, October 3, 2009
Ready For The Return
The impressive new Acropolis Museum makes the case that Greece is all set for the Elgin Marbles
Ian McKellar, National Post

Let’s say you consider yourself something of a budding ruinologist. Perhaps you’ve visited some ancient Roman sites on a trip to Provence, maybe you’ve seen the pyramids or perchance you’ve even made it to Chichen Itza in the Mayan Riviera.

For such a cultured person as yourself, Greece presents a most appealing, if troubling, opportunity. The nation is the cradle of Western civilization, and Athens is chockablock with museums and historical sites — but always there are the whispers of bad traffic, of poor air quality, of stifling heat during the summer months.
Read the rest of this entry »

Vanity Fair has published a number of letters in response to Christopher Hitchens’s piece on the Parthenon Sculptures. Most are positive, but one tries to perpetuate the myth that Elgin saved the sculptures for the Greeks – referring to an article that has already been discredited by more than one commentator.

From:
Vanity Fair

September 2009
Letters

[snip]

Greek Love

THANK YOU for “The Lovely Stones” [July], Christopher Hitchens’s beautiful and insightful piece on the Parthenon, the most elegant edifice created by a free people. His argument for the return of the amputated pieces is stunningly simple and persuasive. And his relating Obama’s stimulus ethos to Pericles’s plan “to recover from a long and ill-fought war”—to “give employment (and a morale boost) to the talents of [Greece’s] citizens … over tremendous conservative opposition to his spending”—is a breathtaking historical reflection. —GEORGE LOIS, director, Good Karma Creative, New York, New York
Read the rest of this entry »

Christopher Hitchens has written a 4 page piece in Vanity Fair about the Parthenon Marbles & the reasons why he believes that they belong in Greece. Unlike many recent pieces though, although it is prompted by the opening of the New Acropolis Museum, it goes far deeper into the argument, looking at many aspects of it rather than purely focussing on this most recent development.

From:
Vanity Fair

Acropolis Now
The Lovely Stones
Among the first to visit Greece’s new Acropolis Museum, devoted to the Parthenon and other temples, the author reviews the origins of a gloriously “right” structure (part of a fifth-century-b.c. stimulus plan) and the continuing outrage that half its façade is still in London.
By Christopher Hitchens July 2009

The great classicist A. W. Lawrence (illegitimate younger brother of the even more famously illegitimate T.E. “of Arabia”) once remarked of the Parthenon that it is “the one building in the world which may be assessed as absolutely right.” I was considering this thought the other day as I stood on top of the temple with Maria Ioannidou, the dedicated director of the Acropolis Restoration Service, and watched the workshop that lay below and around me. Everywhere there were craftsmen and -women, toiling to get the Parthenon and its sister temples ready for viewing by the public this summer. There was the occasional whine of a drill and groan of a crane, but otherwise this was the quietest construction site I have ever seen—or, rather, heard. Putting the rightest, or most right, building to rights means that the workers must use marble from a quarry in the same mountain as the original one, that they must employ old-fashioned chisels to carve, along with traditional brushes and twigs, and that they must study and replicate the ancient Lego-like marble joints with which the master builders of antiquity made it all fit miraculously together.
Read the rest of this entry »

Christopher Hitchens writes about the reasons why the New Acropolis Museum will be the most suitable location for the display of all surviving fragments of the Parthenon Sculptures.

From:
New York Times

Op-Ed Contributor
A Home for the Marbles
By CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Published: June 18, 2009

LONDON — This weekend, the new museum of the Acropolis will open its doors in Athens, in a striking modern building situated at the foot of the rock itself.

For a long time, it has not really been possible for a visitor to Greece to visit the buildings on that most famous of all hills, and also the sculpture that used to adorn them in the days of the cult of Pallas Athena.
Read the rest of this entry »

Christopher Hitchens has long been a strong supporter of the return of the Elgin Marbles & a third edition of his book on the subject (with revised preface) has recently been published. He talks here about why he still believes that it is imperative that the sculptures must return & the impact of some recent events on the issue.

From:
The First Post (UK)

October 6, 2008
Greece has the right to the Elgin Marbles
Christopher Hitchens tells Christina Borg why the marbles must be returned to Athens

Two weeks ago, at the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, due to open early next year, the Presidents of Italy and Greece took part in an historic ceremony (right) that could have major repercussions for Britain. The Italians were handing back to the Greeks a fragment of marble sculpture taken from the Parthenon 200 years ago. The fragment portrays, in exquisite detail, the draped lower leg and foot of a seated goddess, probably Artemis.

It had been removed by the notorious Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire which was occupying Greece at the time. Elgin gave the fragment to the British Consul-General of Sicily and it ended up in the Salinas Museum in Palermo.
Read the rest of this entry »