Volume 36, Number 12 · July 20, 1989
Precious Stones
By Jasper Griffin
Imperial Spoils: The Curious Case of the Elgin Marbles
by Christopher Hitchens, with essays by Robert Browning, by Graham Binns
Hill and Wang, 137 pp., $19.95
The Elgins, 1766–1917: A Tale of Aristocrats, Proconsuls and Their Wives
by Sydney Checkland
Pergamon, 303 pp., $45.00
High on the educated tourist's list of sights to see in Europe stands the British Museum. Its colossal treasure includes everything from Egyptian mummies to Renaissance clocks, Roman silver and Magna Carta, and harps from Ur of the Chaldees and King George V's stamp collection. But pride of place, perhaps, and the most costly galleries, go to a large collection of more or less broken marble carvings from Athens; the celebrated and controversial Elgin Marbles. Their history raises a number of moral and political questions.
Review, 2974 words
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