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Welcome to Hellenic Voice, the podcast that celebrates Greek culture.
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In each episode, we explore literature, poetry, archaeology, theatre, the Greek language, and the connections of Hellenism with other cultures as well as with the Hellenes around the world.
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Today we are joined by filmmaker David Nicholas Wilkinson, director of the new documentary The Marbles.
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His film explores the history and controversy surrounding the Parthenon marbles, the ongoing debate about the return to Greece, and the cultural questions this story raises for all of us.
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David, welcome to Helenica Voice.
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Could you tell us what first inspired you to make a documentary about the Parthenon marbles and how did this project begin back in 2008?
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Did you have a personal connection to the story at that time?
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No, not at all.
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It goes back even further.
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So I used to be an actor, and I like a lot of actors, when you're out of work, you don't want to spend money.
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And uh a friend of mine told me that the British Museum gave free lectures at lunchtime every day.
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And I thought, oh, I I can educate myself and I can, you know, spend time off the streets and not spending money.
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So I went along to them and I must have attended, I don't know, 30 or 40 of them.
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And the only ones that interested me were about ancient Greece.
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Everything else I just didn't connect with.
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And I became fascinated, and like everybody in the 1970s, we just assumed that you know Britain owned the Parthenon marbles, that we had somehow legally acquired them.
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And I thought nothing more of it.
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But the more that I started to look into it, I had a a Greek friend called Alkis Kritikos, who was an actor, still is an actor.
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And he said, But David, they're stolen.
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You you know, you do know that they're stolen.
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And I said, Alchis, no, we're British, we don't steal things, they can't possibly be stolen.
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So I started to look into it, and the more I looked into it, the more the evidence for them being legally acquired was so flimsy that I thought this was wrong.
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And it just stayed with me for a very long time.
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And when I became a filmmaker and I started to make documentaries, I'm always looking for subjects, and I come up with ideas all the time, and most of them I dismiss.
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And the more and more I thought about it, the more I thought this was so incredibly wrong that we had these.
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And I thought I must make a film about it.
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And I couldn't believe nobody else had actually made a film.
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So I started in 2008, and um I began to hit brick walls because various people in the establishment, the British establishment, said you'll get nowhere because while Britain is such a leading um country, really.
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I mean, you know, one of the three, he said, one of the three leading countries within the EU.
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He said the other um EU countries are not going to side with Greece for fear of upsetting Britain, which kind of really angered me.
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But I sort of put it on the back burner and I couldn't find any money or anything.
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And I kept going to people over the years, and people said, Oh no, it's a terrible idea.
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Nobody's interested in the Parthenon marbles.
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And um finally, when we did this very stupid thing and left the EU, um, I suddenly realized that this was an opportunity to start making film.
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So no money.
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I started filming on the 25th of March 2021, the perfect day to make a film putting forward the case as to why Greece should have returned what was taken from them over 200 years ago?
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Thank you, David.
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Well, uh documentaries have tackled this uh story before.
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For instance, the BBC made one called the Elgin marbles.
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In what ways does the marbles challenge or expand uh the public understanding offered in previous documentaries like the BBC's?
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What new perspective were you hoping to bring to audiences?
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It was never a film, it was just television.
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And the thing with television is it comes and goes and it's forgotten.
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When you make a film for the cinema like I make, it has a shelf life of decades, and it will this will sell all around the world.
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Um, so I have never seen that BBC one.
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It could be the one that Christopher Miles made.
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He made a television drama, not a documentary, starring Hugh Grant and Nigel Havers, and also the man that writes Downton Abbey.
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Um they were all involved in it.
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Again, I've never seen that.
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I decided to follow my own way.
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I've read some of the books, and I've come up with something that not one other person comes up with.
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And you really have to understand Britain and British politics, and that is Lord Elgin was Scottish, and the most extra, so he's the only villain of my film.
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And um, what's extraordinary is the country of his birth, Scotland, thinks very differently from England, and Scotland has been returning dubiously acquired artifacts for since 1947, so thinks very, very differently from the Westminster view.
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And as the actor Brian Cox says in my film, he said, if Lord Elgin had put those marbles in a museum in Edinburgh, they would have gone back years ago.
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And I genuinely believe that.
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And I don't understand why nobody else has found this kind of strange parallel that even two countries in the United Kingdom, there is no such place as the United Kingdom.
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It doesn't exist.
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It is four countries that have supposedly come together and that are united, but within those four countries, many of them think differently.
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And in this respect, Scotland thinks very differently from England, and Scotland is very much on the side of Greece.
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Thank you, David.
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That's very interesting.
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Now your film opens with the letter you wrote to the British Museum.
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Why was that your starting point?
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And what did their silence mean for the direction of your documentary?
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Um, it was a very, I just felt it was very important to start at the beginning saying, I am not attacking the British Museum.
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I think the British Museum have a very unfortunate situation.
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As I say in my film, they're damned if they do, they're damned if they don't.
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They must believe that what they've been told by the British government, that they were legally acquired, is in fact the case.
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So they are doing what they think is best for them.
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This is the staff.
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I have problems with some of the trustees.
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So I never saw them as a villain, and I didn't want the film, even though I want the Path of Marbles to go back, I was very keen that the British Museum have their own voice in it and they put their own case.
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But sadly, over the course of not just the five years since I started pre-production on the film, did they not put forward a representative?
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I've been writing to them since 2008, and they've never really engaged with me on that part.
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And so I didn't want people uh who don't agree with my view to say, well, David Wilkins has made such a biased film, it's not biased, it's trying to look at it from all the angles, and it's very interesting that officially the British Museum uh have not put the case within the film, and that makes me wonder why.
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Why?
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If if you're so convinced you have a strong case and that you the the British government legally own them, then surely in a film such as this you would want to express that.
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But then decided not to.
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Yes, I guess you would want to uh defend uh your decision, you know, to keep them, you know.
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So uh that's uh correct.
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Now um the film dives uh into the legal ascentities surrounding the supposed farman uh that Elgin relied upon.
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What surprised you the most when researching that document and is authenticity?
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And did that change your approach, uh the film?
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And how did that change?
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No, because in a way I've always known that.
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So even before I started to make the film, I knew that because it's that's that part of the film is readily available.
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And and what I've done in the film is that I've made it for people who don't know the story.
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So um there's an awful lot of people.
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I've you know, it's been playing all over the country in cinemas, and I've been to a lot of those cinemas, and it's surprising how many British people never knew there was a controversy.
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So I thought it was very important to tell them the story.
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So myself, I've not discovered anything new because I've never believed that the Italian ferment was genuine because it's always why in Italian?
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And you know, the the if you look, if you go to anybody goes to look at the archive in Istanbul, and the Ottoman Empire kept very detailed um you know reports of everything, and you just can't find anything referring to this, and there's nothing missing, it's all numbered one, two, three, four, five, you know, for you know, hundreds of years, and there is nothing there relating to it.
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So if it's genuine, why isn't there a record in Istanbul?
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And why, as we say in the film, why Italian?
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The Italians weren't involved in any of this, you know, it it wasn't a language used at the time.
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And so it's a bit there's a saying in the UK: if somebody hasn't done their homework, they go to the teacher and they say, Oh, I'm sorry, teacher, the dog ate my homework.
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That's why I don't have it.
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And for me, that's what this is the Italian Furman is Lord Elginger.
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It's it's the the dog ate my you know homework.
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It's a kind of ludicrous kind of he thought, how can I get around this?
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I can't produce uh a real Ottoman Furman because I don't know how to do it.
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Nobody I know knows how to do it.
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I know what we'll do.
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We'll do this forgery in Italian, and that will that will you know pull the wool over the eyes of the of the British government at the time.
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And in uh UK, as we know, as we all know, we always need evidence, you know.
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So to say that something is mine, I need to prove it with solid evidence, which, as you said, they don't have this evidence.
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Yes, that's the only evidence they have, and it's so very, very weak.
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But also the interesting thing is Lord Elgin himself, when he was trying to get as much money as he could from the British government, is that he told them he needed the money because he had to pay so much in bribes to people within Athens that worked for the Ottoman Empire.
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Now, if the Sultan had given him a furman, he wouldn't have had to bribe anyone.
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This is the most powerful person in the Ottoman Empire.
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Everybody would have opened the doors, they he wouldn't have needed to resort to that.
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So, even in his own words, he kind of contradicted himself.
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And at the time, it was never a straightforward conclusion that the British government would buy them.
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There were an awful lot of people, particularly in um what's called polite society, the the upper classes that kind of ruled the UK.
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Um, most of them were very angry with him for taking them because part of, you know, because they were so rich, is they used to go on the grand tour.
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And the grand tour, the the high point of it all, was going to Athens to see all these sculptures.
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And they felt really frustrated and angry.
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Yes, they were in the British Museum, but they felt that they should be seen where they were created, not in a false environment.
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So the controversy has been there ever since he brought them over.
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So uh David, you work with experts like Alexander Herman and uh Mark Stephens.
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What kilica or historical insights did they provide that really reshaped your understanding uh of the case?
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Did they just spoke about their opinion?
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Uh what the feelings, or did they actually give you some additional uh evidence, or as experts, you know, the their point of view?
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Not really, because all of that's been around for a long time.
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And as I say, the only thing I've brought new to the debate is the whole Scotland, Scotland versus England.
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And also it's not just um Scotland, a lot of English museums are now returning dubiously acquired artifacts.
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So you're getting this extraordinary thing that it's just the British Museum that's not.
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So Mark and Alexander, um, they've written extensively about this.
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So I knew most of what they were going to tell me, but that was not for me.
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So in making a film, I have to be aware, I take the view that the vast majority of people watching the film don't know the story.
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So they are the people, rather than me, just sit in a chair like I'm doing now and just come out with it all, they're telling the story for that audience.
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You highlight uh also cases such as the Lakota Cosetance shirt that have been successfully returned.
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What lessons should the UK learn from these uh examples?
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Does this give hope for the marbles eventual return?
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Yeah, yes.
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I mean, you say the UK.
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Well, it's not the UK, we're really talking about Westminster, because what's interesting in Scotland is I have many examples.
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Is I I cover um the ghost dance shirt, yes, but I also cover um you know what what happened, that the first ever Benin bronzes to be returned by a museum anywhere in the world was in Aberdeen, which is you know north in Scotland.
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So um there is that different sort of way of thinking, which I think is very important.
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And I think that when the people of Britain, if this was to go to a vote and people were to watch my film, and when they actually know the truth, they're going to.
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I mean, they have.
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I've I've had people come who in the QA's and they've not known anything about it, particularly friends of mine, and they just come so I will go and see David's latest film.
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And they felt very strongly that now they know the truth, they just think it's really wrong.
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I mean, you know, again, as Brian Cox says, you know, the Scots think if something doesn't belong to someone, the Scots give it back.
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And they've got this incredible history going back to 1947.
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But there's a strange thing, and it's an English thing.
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It's not Scottish, it's not Welsh, it's English, is the find us keepers.
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We've got them.
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We don't care about Greece, we're gonna keep them, they're ours.
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And it just seems to me, I want the British Museum to be full of British artifacts.
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We have an extraordinary culture, we've got the most wonderful things in museums all around the United Kingdom.
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Some of those should be housed in the British Museum, and everything that isn't British in the British Museum should go back to the country it belonged to.
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We should celebrate this country.
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We should stop basking in the reflected glory of a country that at the time the Parthenon was built was a civilization that was so far advanced of the people that were living in what became England.
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We were living in glorified mud huts.
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If we had any art at all, it was it was probably sculptures in wood, none of it exists.
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But this extraordinary culture in ancient Greece, which has given the modern day world so much of what makes our lives rich and enjoyable, they should have this back.
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It really is wrong on every level, even if you somebody miraculously said, yes, the British legally own them.
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That's irrelevant.
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Morally, they're Greek and they belong in Greece, they do not belong in London WC2.
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What do you hope British uh audiences uh specifically will take away from this documentary or film, if you like, uh David?
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Do you think um they will get you know sentimental as well?
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Or and they will start thinking, yes, you know, we shouldn't keep them.
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We should return and the marbles to Greece.
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There's a there's a an element in the British that we do believe in fair play and we believe in doing the right thing.
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There are a lot, you know, we play cricket in this country, and there are lots of cricketing terms about you know batting you know the straight bat and all of that.
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And I think that you know, British people, when they see it and it's already happening and they know the truth, they want to do the right thing and they will want them to go back to Greece.
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They have no you know, connection to Britain at all.
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And as the former Greek ambassador in London says on the film, you know, he says that for the people of Greece, it is their soul, it is their birthright, these and they are, and that is really important, and it all boils down to I mean, Greece is our friend.
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It's not like Greece has ever been, we've ever really fallen out with Greece.
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I mean, Greece has always been there for us for decades when we need it, and this is not how friends treat each other.
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We really should show respect and compassion and and understanding, and therefore they need to go back.
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Absolutely, David.
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I mean, this is not just a legal or political issue, it's about identity and heritage, uh, you know.
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So um the marbles symbolize uh something significant, uh great for the Greeks, you know, not only the Greeks in Greece, but abroad as well, you know, and there are so many Greeks in in the UK, as we all know.
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Now, finally, were there moments in the making of the film when you faced resistance, either institutional or personal, because of the subject matter?
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And how did you overcome those challenges to finish the documentary, David?
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Um, the biggest problem was money.
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I I I did have a very hard time uh raising money.
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I I went over to Washington, D.C.
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when Prime Minister Mitsutakis was speaking there, and I went to a banquet, and I met with lots of very wealthy American Greeks, and sadly I couldn't get any of them to give me money, but I slowly got money, bits and pieces.
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The biggest problem was the British Museum themselves, because from 2008 till 2021, when I started filming, they wouldn't engage with me at all.
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They would never return my letters, my emails, my phone calls or anything.
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And it coincided with George Osborne when he became chair.
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And I suddenly, even though they wouldn't appear in the film, I started to have a dialogue with them.
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And that's very good.
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So George Osborne has had all these secret talks with the Greek government, and which is the first time in over 200 years that anybody has really had that level of engagement, which I think is very promising.
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And um they, you know, they bent over backwards to make sure I've got the best shots.
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I I don't think anybody's got better shots than I have of uh the marbles because and and the freezes, because we shot them when nobody was in there, there was no public at all, and they were beautifully, beautifully lit.
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And it shows them to the best you know possible way.
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And and I thought that was very important.
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And if the British Museum hadn't been that helpful, that would have been a problem because you know, throughout the film I talk about these, you know, civilization's greatest artworks, and if I hadn't been able to show them in the way that I can, it would have made for a poorer film.
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So I'm very, very thankful to them for that.
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And you know, there are people in a pretty senior level at the British Museum who have said to me off the record they agree they should go back.
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Yes, I'm sure they did, but it's the job.
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And how can you know?
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I'm sure they can't say this openly.
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And I ful and I fully understand, you know, you need to be really strong to express your own opinion about such a uh a topic.
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David, thank you so much for this insightful conversation.
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Thank you, and it was nice to talking with you.
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Thank you very much.
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The marbles not only sheds light on the history of the Parthenon sculptures, but also remind us why cultural heritage matters, why it belongs to the people who created it, and why these discussions are so important today.
00:23:58.640 --> 00:24:02.960
And to our listeners, thank you for joining us on Hellenic Voice.
00:24:03.119 --> 00:24:09.680
Until next time, stay well, stay informed, and keep the conversation going.
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Thank you for listening to Hellenic Voice.
00:24:21.839 --> 00:24:32.079
If you enjoyed this episode, please support us by sharing it, leaving your comments and following us on social media so we can continue this journey through big culture together.
00:24:32.559 --> 00:24:36.880
Until the next episode, the police of Hellenism continues.
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Welcome to Hellenic Voice, the podcast that celebrates Greek culture.
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In each episode, we explore literature, poetry, archaeology, theatre, the Greek language, and the connections of Hellenism with other cultures as well as with the Hellenes around the world.
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Today we are joined by filmmaker David Nicholas Wilkinson, director of the new documentary The Marbles.
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His film explores the history and controversy surrounding the Parthenon marbles, the ongoing debate about the return to Greece, and the cultural questions this story raises for all of us.
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David, welcome to Helenica Voice.
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Could you tell us what first inspired you to make a documentary about the Parthenon marbles and how did this project begin back in 2008?
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Did you have a personal connection to the story at that time?
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No, not at all.
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It goes back even further.
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So I used to be an actor, and I like a lot of actors, when you're out of work, you don't want to spend money.
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And uh a friend of mine told me that the British Museum gave free lectures at lunchtime every day.
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And I thought, oh, I I can educate myself and I can, you know, spend time off the streets and not spending money.
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So I went along to them and I must have attended, I don't know, 30 or 40 of them.
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And the only ones that interested me were about ancient Greece.
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Everything else I just didn't connect with.
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And I became fascinated, and like everybody in the 1970s, we just assumed that you know Britain owned the Parthenon marbles, that we had somehow legally acquired them.
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And I thought nothing more of it.
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But the more that I started to look into it, I had a a Greek friend called Alkis Kritikos, who was an actor, still is an actor.
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And he said, But David, they're stolen.
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You you know, you do know that they're stolen.
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And I said, Alchis, no, we're British, we don't steal things, they can't possibly be stolen.
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So I started to look into it, and the more I looked into it, the more the evidence for them being legally acquired was so flimsy that I thought this was wrong.
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And it just stayed with me for a very long time.
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And when I became a filmmaker and I started to make documentaries, I'm always looking for subjects, and I come up with ideas all the time, and most of them I dismiss.
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And the more and more I thought about it, the more I thought this was so incredibly wrong that we had these.
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And I thought I must make a film about it.
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And I couldn't believe nobody else had actually made a film.
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So I started in 2008, and um I began to hit brick walls because various people in the establishment, the British establishment, said you'll get nowhere because while Britain is such a leading um country, really.
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I mean, you know, one of the three, he said, one of the three leading countries within the EU.
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He said the other um EU countries are not going to side with Greece for fear of upsetting Britain, which kind of really angered me.
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But I sort of put it on the back burner and I couldn't find any money or anything.
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And I kept going to people over the years, and people said, Oh no, it's a terrible idea.
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Nobody's interested in the Parthenon marbles.
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And um finally, when we did this very stupid thing and left the EU, um, I suddenly realized that this was an opportunity to start making film.
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So no money.
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I started filming on the 25th of March 2021, the perfect day to make a film putting forward the case as to why Greece should have returned what was taken from them over 200 years ago?
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Thank you, David.
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Well, uh documentaries have tackled this uh story before.
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For instance, the BBC made one called the Elgin marbles.
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In what ways does the marbles challenge or expand uh the public understanding offered in previous documentaries like the BBC's?
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What new perspective were you hoping to bring to audiences?
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It was never a film, it was just television.
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And the thing with television is it comes and goes and it's forgotten.
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When you make a film for the cinema like I make, it has a shelf life of decades, and it will this will sell all around the world.
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Um, so I have never seen that BBC one.
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It could be the one that Christopher Miles made.
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He made a television drama, not a documentary, starring Hugh Grant and Nigel Havers, and also the man that writes Downton Abbey.
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Um they were all involved in it.
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Again, I've never seen that.
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I decided to follow my own way.
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I've read some of the books, and I've come up with something that not one other person comes up with.
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And you really have to understand Britain and British politics, and that is Lord Elgin was Scottish, and the most extra, so he's the only villain of my film.
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And um, what's extraordinary is the country of his birth, Scotland, thinks very differently from England, and Scotland has been returning dubiously acquired artifacts for since 1947, so thinks very, very differently from the Westminster view.
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And as the actor Brian Cox says in my film, he said, if Lord Elgin had put those marbles in a museum in Edinburgh, they would have gone back years ago.
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And I genuinely believe that.
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And I don't understand why nobody else has found this kind of strange parallel that even two countries in the United Kingdom, there is no such place as the United Kingdom.
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It doesn't exist.
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It is four countries that have supposedly come together and that are united, but within those four countries, many of them think differently.
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And in this respect, Scotland thinks very differently from England, and Scotland is very much on the side of Greece.
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Thank you, David.
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That's very interesting.
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Now your film opens with the letter you wrote to the British Museum.
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Why was that your starting point?
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And what did their silence mean for the direction of your documentary?
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Um, it was a very, I just felt it was very important to start at the beginning saying, I am not attacking the British Museum.
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I think the British Museum have a very unfortunate situation.
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As I say in my film, they're damned if they do, they're damned if they don't.
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They must believe that what they've been told by the British government, that they were legally acquired, is in fact the case.
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So they are doing what they think is best for them.
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This is the staff.
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I have problems with some of the trustees.
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So I never saw them as a villain, and I didn't want the film, even though I want the Path of Marbles to go back, I was very keen that the British Museum have their own voice in it and they put their own case.
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But sadly, over the course of not just the five years since I started pre-production on the film, did they not put forward a representative?
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I've been writing to them since 2008, and they've never really engaged with me on that part.
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And so I didn't want people uh who don't agree with my view to say, well, David Wilkins has made such a biased film, it's not biased, it's trying to look at it from all the angles, and it's very interesting that officially the British Museum uh have not put the case within the film, and that makes me wonder why.
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Why?
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If if you're so convinced you have a strong case and that you the the British government legally own them, then surely in a film such as this you would want to express that.
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But then decided not to.
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Yes, I guess you would want to uh defend uh your decision, you know, to keep them, you know.
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So uh that's uh correct.
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Now um the film dives uh into the legal ascentities surrounding the supposed farman uh that Elgin relied upon.
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What surprised you the most when researching that document and is authenticity?
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And did that change your approach, uh the film?
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And how did that change?
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No, because in a way I've always known that.
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So even before I started to make the film, I knew that because it's that's that part of the film is readily available.
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And and what I've done in the film is that I've made it for people who don't know the story.
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So um there's an awful lot of people.
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I've you know, it's been playing all over the country in cinemas, and I've been to a lot of those cinemas, and it's surprising how many British people never knew there was a controversy.
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So I thought it was very important to tell them the story.
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So myself, I've not discovered anything new because I've never believed that the Italian ferment was genuine because it's always why in Italian?
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And you know, the the if you look, if you go to anybody goes to look at the archive in Istanbul, and the Ottoman Empire kept very detailed um you know reports of everything, and you just can't find anything referring to this, and there's nothing missing, it's all numbered one, two, three, four, five, you know, for you know, hundreds of years, and there is nothing there relating to it.
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So if it's genuine, why isn't there a record in Istanbul?
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And why, as we say in the film, why Italian?
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The Italians weren't involved in any of this, you know, it it wasn't a language used at the time.
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And so it's a bit there's a saying in the UK: if somebody hasn't done their homework, they go to the teacher and they say, Oh, I'm sorry, teacher, the dog ate my homework.
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That's why I don't have it.
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And for me, that's what this is the Italian Furman is Lord Elginger.
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It's it's the the dog ate my you know homework.
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It's a kind of ludicrous kind of he thought, how can I get around this?
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I can't produce uh a real Ottoman Furman because I don't know how to do it.
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Nobody I know knows how to do it.
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I know what we'll do.
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We'll do this forgery in Italian, and that will that will you know pull the wool over the eyes of the of the British government at the time.
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And in uh UK, as we know, as we all know, we always need evidence, you know.
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So to say that something is mine, I need to prove it with solid evidence, which, as you said, they don't have this evidence.
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Yes, that's the only evidence they have, and it's so very, very weak.
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But also the interesting thing is Lord Elgin himself, when he was trying to get as much money as he could from the British government, is that he told them he needed the money because he had to pay so much in bribes to people within Athens that worked for the Ottoman Empire.
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Now, if the Sultan had given him a furman, he wouldn't have had to bribe anyone.
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This is the most powerful person in the Ottoman Empire.
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Everybody would have opened the doors, they he wouldn't have needed to resort to that.
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So, even in his own words, he kind of contradicted himself.
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And at the time, it was never a straightforward conclusion that the British government would buy them.
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There were an awful lot of people, particularly in um what's called polite society, the the upper classes that kind of ruled the UK.
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Um, most of them were very angry with him for taking them because part of, you know, because they were so rich, is they used to go on the grand tour.
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And the grand tour, the the high point of it all, was going to Athens to see all these sculptures.
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And they felt really frustrated and angry.
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Yes, they were in the British Museum, but they felt that they should be seen where they were created, not in a false environment.
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So the controversy has been there ever since he brought them over.
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So uh David, you work with experts like Alexander Herman and uh Mark Stephens.
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What kilica or historical insights did they provide that really reshaped your understanding uh of the case?
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Did they just spoke about their opinion?
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Uh what the feelings, or did they actually give you some additional uh evidence, or as experts, you know, the their point of view?
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Not really, because all of that's been around for a long time.
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And as I say, the only thing I've brought new to the debate is the whole Scotland, Scotland versus England.
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And also it's not just um Scotland, a lot of English museums are now returning dubiously acquired artifacts.
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So you're getting this extraordinary thing that it's just the British Museum that's not.
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So Mark and Alexander, um, they've written extensively about this.
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So I knew most of what they were going to tell me, but that was not for me.
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So in making a film, I have to be aware, I take the view that the vast majority of people watching the film don't know the story.
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So they are the people, rather than me, just sit in a chair like I'm doing now and just come out with it all, they're telling the story for that audience.
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You highlight uh also cases such as the Lakota Cosetance shirt that have been successfully returned.
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What lessons should the UK learn from these uh examples?
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Does this give hope for the marbles eventual return?
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Yeah, yes.
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I mean, you say the UK.
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Well, it's not the UK, we're really talking about Westminster, because what's interesting in Scotland is I have many examples.
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Is I I cover um the ghost dance shirt, yes, but I also cover um you know what what happened, that the first ever Benin bronzes to be returned by a museum anywhere in the world was in Aberdeen, which is you know north in Scotland.
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So um there is that different sort of way of thinking, which I think is very important.
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And I think that when the people of Britain, if this was to go to a vote and people were to watch my film, and when they actually know the truth, they're going to.
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I mean, they have.
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I've I've had people come who in the QA's and they've not known anything about it, particularly friends of mine, and they just come so I will go and see David's latest film.
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And they felt very strongly that now they know the truth, they just think it's really wrong.
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I mean, you know, again, as Brian Cox says, you know, the Scots think if something doesn't belong to someone, the Scots give it back.
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And they've got this incredible history going back to 1947.
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But there's a strange thing, and it's an English thing.
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It's not Scottish, it's not Welsh, it's English, is the find us keepers.
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We've got them.
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We don't care about Greece, we're gonna keep them, they're ours.
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And it just seems to me, I want the British Museum to be full of British artifacts.
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We have an extraordinary culture, we've got the most wonderful things in museums all around the United Kingdom.
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Some of those should be housed in the British Museum, and everything that isn't British in the British Museum should go back to the country it belonged to.
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We should celebrate this country.
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We should stop basking in the reflected glory of a country that at the time the Parthenon was built was a civilization that was so far advanced of the people that were living in what became England.
00:17:57.519 --> 00:17:59.839
We were living in glorified mud huts.
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If we had any art at all, it was it was probably sculptures in wood, none of it exists.
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But this extraordinary culture in ancient Greece, which has given the modern day world so much of what makes our lives rich and enjoyable, they should have this back.
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It really is wrong on every level, even if you somebody miraculously said, yes, the British legally own them.
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That's irrelevant.
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Morally, they're Greek and they belong in Greece, they do not belong in London WC2.
00:18:39.039 --> 00:18:48.160
What do you hope British uh audiences uh specifically will take away from this documentary or film, if you like, uh David?
00:18:48.400 --> 00:18:53.839
Do you think um they will get you know sentimental as well?
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Or and they will start thinking, yes, you know, we shouldn't keep them.
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We should return and the marbles to Greece.
00:19:05.039 --> 00:19:15.039
There's a there's a an element in the British that we do believe in fair play and we believe in doing the right thing.
00:19:15.119 --> 00:19:26.000
There are a lot, you know, we play cricket in this country, and there are lots of cricketing terms about you know batting you know the straight bat and all of that.
00:19:26.160 --> 00:19:37.519
And I think that you know, British people, when they see it and it's already happening and they know the truth, they want to do the right thing and they will want them to go back to Greece.
00:19:39.039 --> 00:19:44.160
They have no you know, connection to Britain at all.
00:19:44.400 --> 00:20:03.359
And as the former Greek ambassador in London says on the film, you know, he says that for the people of Greece, it is their soul, it is their birthright, these and they are, and that is really important, and it all boils down to I mean, Greece is our friend.
00:20:03.519 --> 00:20:10.000
It's not like Greece has ever been, we've ever really fallen out with Greece.
00:20:10.079 --> 00:20:17.039
I mean, Greece has always been there for us for decades when we need it, and this is not how friends treat each other.
00:20:17.359 --> 00:20:25.759
We really should show respect and compassion and and understanding, and therefore they need to go back.
00:20:26.160 --> 00:20:27.279
Absolutely, David.
00:20:27.359 --> 00:20:34.480
I mean, this is not just a legal or political issue, it's about identity and heritage, uh, you know.
00:20:34.799 --> 00:20:52.240
So um the marbles symbolize uh something significant, uh great for the Greeks, you know, not only the Greeks in Greece, but abroad as well, you know, and there are so many Greeks in in the UK, as we all know.
00:20:52.400 --> 00:21:02.319
Now, finally, were there moments in the making of the film when you faced resistance, either institutional or personal, because of the subject matter?
00:21:02.400 --> 00:21:07.680
And how did you overcome those challenges to finish the documentary, David?
00:21:08.240 --> 00:21:10.319
Um, the biggest problem was money.
00:21:10.480 --> 00:21:14.960
I I I did have a very hard time uh raising money.
00:21:15.039 --> 00:21:17.359
I I went over to Washington, D.C.
00:21:17.599 --> 00:21:31.359
when Prime Minister Mitsutakis was speaking there, and I went to a banquet, and I met with lots of very wealthy American Greeks, and sadly I couldn't get any of them to give me money, but I slowly got money, bits and pieces.
00:21:31.519 --> 00:21:43.119
The biggest problem was the British Museum themselves, because from 2008 till 2021, when I started filming, they wouldn't engage with me at all.
00:21:43.279 --> 00:21:47.680
They would never return my letters, my emails, my phone calls or anything.
00:21:47.839 --> 00:21:53.279
And it coincided with George Osborne when he became chair.
00:21:53.440 --> 00:21:59.359
And I suddenly, even though they wouldn't appear in the film, I started to have a dialogue with them.
00:21:59.519 --> 00:22:00.559
And that's very good.
00:22:00.640 --> 00:22:14.240
So George Osborne has had all these secret talks with the Greek government, and which is the first time in over 200 years that anybody has really had that level of engagement, which I think is very promising.
00:22:14.559 --> 00:22:20.720
And um they, you know, they bent over backwards to make sure I've got the best shots.
00:22:20.799 --> 00:22:35.200
I I don't think anybody's got better shots than I have of uh the marbles because and and the freezes, because we shot them when nobody was in there, there was no public at all, and they were beautifully, beautifully lit.
00:22:35.440 --> 00:22:40.880
And it shows them to the best you know possible way.
00:22:41.039 --> 00:22:42.960
And and I thought that was very important.
00:22:43.200 --> 00:23:01.359
And if the British Museum hadn't been that helpful, that would have been a problem because you know, throughout the film I talk about these, you know, civilization's greatest artworks, and if I hadn't been able to show them in the way that I can, it would have made for a poorer film.
00:23:01.519 --> 00:23:04.319
So I'm very, very thankful to them for that.
00:23:04.559 --> 00:23:13.519
And you know, there are people in a pretty senior level at the British Museum who have said to me off the record they agree they should go back.
00:23:14.000 --> 00:23:17.920
Yes, I'm sure they did, but it's the job.
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And how can you know?
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I'm sure they can't say this openly.
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And I ful and I fully understand, you know, you need to be really strong to express your own opinion about such a uh a topic.
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David, thank you so much for this insightful conversation.
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Thank you, and it was nice to talking with you.
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Thank you very much.
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The marbles not only sheds light on the history of the Parthenon sculptures, but also remind us why cultural heritage matters, why it belongs to the people who created it, and why these discussions are so important today.
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And to our listeners, thank you for joining us on Hellenic Voice.
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Until next time, stay well, stay informed, and keep the conversation going.
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Thank you for listening to Hellenic Voice.
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If you enjoyed this episode, please support us by sharing it, leaving your comments and following us on social media so we can continue this journey through big culture together.
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Until the next episode, the police of Hellenism continues.
