Observer: “We must return the Parthenon marbles”

On Sunday, however, published in the Observer an article entitled:

“As a Briton, I hang my head in shame. We must return the Parthenon marbles”.

In her article, Smith takes a clear position in favor of our country.

“Now Amal Clooney has reignited the debate over the Parthenon’s crowning glory, it’s time we rectified a historic wrong. Reunite these ancient sculptures with their home”, says Smith, repeating the words of Lord Byron: “I am with Greece.”

She express her enthusiasm for the fact that due to the visit of Amal Clooney in Athens last week, re-erupted the issue, which should have been resolved long ago, if “logic and common decency had prevailed”.

“Were a British national monument to suffer the same fate, I dread to think what the reaction would be. But again and again, I have been struck by the equanimity displayed by Athens. With the courtesy that one nation knows for another, the Greeks have trodden a path of conciliation over anger, placation over rancour, humour over hostility.

Indeed, Greece has gone so far as to propose joint curatorship of the marbles through the establishment of a branch of the British Museum, within sight of the Parthenon, on the top floor of the New Acropolis Museum.

The decision to hire Clooney, the youngest in a group that includes the distinguished QCs Geoffrey Robertson and Norman Palmer, reflects what is increasingly being seen as the exhaustion of channels, both political and diplomatic, to resolve the dispute”, comments Smith about the attitude of Athens.

“As a Briton, I hang my head in shame but take heart in what the poet Titos Patrikios, an old friend, calls Greece’s “unbeatable weapon”; the common sense of ordinary Britons who for almost two decades have overwhelmingly endorsed repatriation in successive opinion polls. It was another poet, Yannis Ritsos, who summed up the marbles’ predicament best. “These stones don’t feel at ease with less sky,” he wrote. They needed the luminosity of Attica to be appreciated most”.

Smith ends her article by saying: “Greece has gone through its darkest hour in recent years. The reunification of the sculptures would be a huge shot in the arm for a nation that in times of difficulty has always stood by Britain. Rarely do we have such opportunities to right a wrong. That opportunity is here now and in the name of everything it stands for, Great Britain should seize the moment”.