How Lord Elgin lost his marbles JULIAN CHAMPKIN tells the tragic story of Lord Elgin's obsession with the controversial Greek masterpieces and how it eventually ruined him

From: Daily Mail | Date: June 25, 2004| Author: JULIAN CHAMPKIN | Copyright information

A few American tourists trudge around the small town of Elgin in the north of Scotland, having made the long journey there to see the Elgin marbles. They are disappointed to find that their journey has been for nothing.

The Elgin marbles, of course, are in the British Museum.

There they are displayed - a collection of marble sculptures that formed a frieze that once decorated the Parthenon in Athens. And there they will stay, if popular British sentiment has anything to do with...

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The Independent - London ; You can forget New York and Paris. You can even forget Bilbao. London is ground zero of world art: whether the astonishing success of Tate Modern (testing conventions of crowd control as well as aesthetics) or the vigorous art markets of Hoxton and Shoreditch, there's an unique energy in the air
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The Sunday Telegraph London ; `Cold as the crags upon his native coast, / His mind as barren and his heart as hard, / Is he whose head conceived, whose hand prepared, / Aught to displace Athena's poor remains . . ." Byron's account of the actions of Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin, in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, offers a
It's time to send back the Elgin marbles
The Scotsman ; LOOK up Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine in Chambers (invaluable) Biographical Dictionary, and you will find this entry: "British diplomat and art connoisseur. While ambassador to the Porte (1799-1803) he became interested in the decorated sculptures on the ruined
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The Sunday Herald ; 1 The current Lord Elgin last week said that the 2500-year-old Elgin marbles - or the Parthenon Marbles, to give them their politically correct title - should not return to Greece because the Greeks could not be trusted to preserve them. He was reponding to a new campaign, Marbles Reunited, which
Legal Matters: 'Handing back' the Elgin Marbles is not an option.(News)
The Birmingham Post (England) ; Byline: Peter Andrews QC The Elgin Marbles are arguably the finest example of surviving ancient Greek sculptures in the world and yet they reside in the British Museum and not The Parthenon. Arguments over whether they were saved by an heroic collector or plundered by an opportunist villain have
Keats's TO HAYDON, WITH A SONNET WRITTEN ON SEEING THE ELGIN MARBLES and ON SEEING THE ELGIN MARBLES.(Critical Essay)
The Explicator ; Walter Jackson Bate, in his biography of Keats, wrote, [O]n either Saturday, March 1, or Monday, March 3, Haydon took Keats and Reynolds to see the Elgin Marbles--the great collection of sculpture from the Parthenon. Immediately we are reminded again of Keats's intoxication with the ideal of
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The Independent - London ; Sir: Stephen Bayley believes that if Greece had not been occupied by the Turks, then the Parthenon marbles would have been well looked after and not sold to Lord Elgin ("Good riddance: who needs the Elgin Marbles 6 June). Far from it: the Greek Orthodox Church was far more implacably opposed to
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The Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY) ; Byline: Alison O'Neil, 6th grader To the Editor: The Elgin Marbles have been a big issue between Greece and England. A long time ago, a British ambassador went to Greece and got permission to remove the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon. From that day to this, they sit in a London museum. Now,
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Liverpool Echo (Liverpool, England) ; GREECE'S minister of culture, Evangelos Venizelo, was today visiting London for talks on his country's demand for the return of the Elgin marbles.