Differences and split between her British government and his British museumarose during the visit of Melina Mercouris to London in 1983 to raise the issue of repatriation Sculptors of the Parthenonrevealed recently declassified Foreign Office documents, the contents of which were published today on The Art Newspaper.

According to the documents, British Foreign Office officials were concerned that Mercouri, then Greece’s culture minister, handily won a televised debate between her and then-British Museum director David Wilson over the return of the sculptures forty years ago. May 1983

“Her upbeat personality and romantic struggles have garnered considerable interest and attention from the press. Some of her dramatic outbursts bordered on silliness, but she certainly stole the limelight from her main character, David Wilson,” the documents say.

The Foreign Office also recorded Mercury’s position that the Sculptures are “an integral part of the monument embodying the national spirit of Greece”, as well as Wilson’s response that the British Museum is a unique international institution “which cannot be dissolved”. However, British officials concluded that the Greek minister “comfortably won the confrontation”.

The then British ambassador to Athens, Peregrine Rhodes, thought that “Wilson’s arguments are probably ineffective” and that the British government should take a harder line, as “avoidance of this issue can only accumulate problems in the future”.