Arts editor needs a ‘reality check’ on artefacts

Your arts editor needs a month off work, for an in-depth reality check. His article, ‘Stolen moments in British Museum’, (Irish Examiner, Nov 4), calls for items to be returned to their countries of origin.

Laughably, he recommends that the large ogham stone, from Roovesmoor, should be re-erected in West Cork, there to endure inevitable, long-term destruction by Ireland’s weather, or short-term destruction by the roads department, the people who are erecting electricity pylons in kilometre-wide swathes over hill, house and dale, or, as has happened since ‘Farmer O’Reilly’ discovered the plough, to disappear, before transmogrifying into a new barn.

The arts editor then demands that an American Indian carving be given back to the tribe that sold it in 1932; that a stone figure should be returned to languish unseen on one of the Easter Isles; that the Elgin Marbles be given back to impoverished Greece, when Opolous would surely flog them to a passing Chinese investor.