the Parthenon Marbles ­ a campaigning body set up in 1983 as a response to Melina Mercouri's appeal for the marbles' repatriation - endorses this view. "The Parthenon Sculptures deserve to be housed in the New Acropolis Museum," she says. "Currently they are a fragmented piece of art, yet as one significant piece, visitors will be able to see the whole as it ought to be seen, in context, at the foot of the Acropolis itself."

Echoing these sentiments is the writer Christopher Hitchens, who earlier this year re-published his 1987 polemic, The Elgin Marbles, now retitled The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification. Hitchens insists the Greeks have "a natural right" to the sculptures, and that they belong on the hill of the Acropolis - "in that light, in that air. Pentelic marble does not occur in the UK."

So why hasn't this been evident to the British authorities? Hitchens says: "Partly, that is to do with Greece's geography in that for a long time it wasn't a stable country: repeated wars, occupations, demolitions, and so on, in which the temples suffered terribly."

Hitchens's interest in the marbles began

about 25 years ago when he read an essay by Colin Macinnes, author of the 1950s novel Absolute Beginners. "He'd taken an interest in the Parthenon Marbles early on when no one was bothering with it and I read his essay and thought 'Shit, I didn't know all that. I didn't know.' I was predisposed to be a philhellene by my education and by making friends with a lot of Greeks during the time of the dictatorship. Who isn't impressed by what they find out about 5th century Athens?

"But the congealing, catalysing effect was this essay and around that time Melina Mercouri [the former actress and singer] became the Greek Minister of Culture and the subject got revived."

Hitchens wrote his first article on the subject for the Spectator in 1983. "The thing that struck me the most and still does was that though my article had taken one-by-one all the arguments for retention and said this is why these arguments that are well known are actually very bogus, people wrote to me as if I had not mentioned them. "And I thought - this is very odd that people should be so blind, I mean I've just said why that's