I n a very personal and thoughtful documentary, film-maker David Wilkinson revives the great question of the restitution of the Parthenon marbles , that longstanding Hellenic enthusiasm and flagship cultural cause for the educated British left from Lord Byron in the 1810s to Christopher Hitchens in the 1980s (although Hitchens’ vehement advocacy is not mentioned here). For more than 200 years, the British Museum in London has proudly displayed themarbles – and done very decent educational and curatorial work while gradually registering awareness that this is stolen property. Lord Elgin effectively plundered these artefacts and his supposed purchase of them could hardly be seen as anything more than a bribe, especially as the permission document or “firman” from the then controlling Otto

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