SOURCE: Lubbock, Jules. “Come and Get 'em.” New Statesman (7 August 1987): 30.

In the following review of The Elgin Marbles, Lubbock discusses the long-standing controversy and public debate surrounding the return of the Elgin Marbles, and other cultural artifacts, to their country of origin.

Of all the lost causes for which the liberal left and this journal have ever provided a home, the campaign to return the Elgin Marbles to Athens must seem the ultimate as well the most forlorn. The launch of [The Elgin Marbles] at St James's Piccadilly was attended by two former editors and many present and former writers for the New Statesman including Christopher Hitchens himself, several eminent professors, some with and some without snowy white beards, and Eric Heffer MP—all of them burning with the injustice of the situation.

The book itself explains and argues their case with impeccable clarity and all the information...