A new documentary proves “beyond any shadow of a doubt” that the Elgin Marbles were stolen, according to its director.

David Wilkinson claims The Marbles settles one of the most divisive debates in cultural heritage: whether 19th-century diplomat Lord Elgin legally acquired the Parthenon Sculptures, better known as the Elgin Marbles.

The film revisits how the sculptures were removed from the Parthenon in Athens while Greece was under Ottoman rule – and ended up in London.

It argues that Lord Elgin did not legally acquire the artefacts – and instead, it amounts to “the greatest heist in art history”.

Actor Brian Cox, historian Dominic Selwood and solicitor Mark Stephens are among those who appear in the documentary.

The British government bought the sculptures from Lord Elgin and installed them into the trusteeship of the British Museum, where they have remained for 200 years.

“He needed the money from the British government to pay for all the bribes he’d given to members of the Ottoman Empire,” Wilkinson says of the transaction.

“Lord Elgin did sell them … but the question becomes, did Lord Elgin actually have the right to purchase them?”

Classical archaeologist Mario Trabucco della Torretta dismisses Wilkinson’s claims.

“The allegation of bribery to obtain the Marbles is just wrong in historical terms,” he told Sky News.

Torretta was the key architect behind a joint letter that included former prime minister Liz Truss, historian Dr David Starkey and Sir John Redwood – alleging the British Museum is part of a “covert” and “accelerating campaign” to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece.

Responding to Wilkinson’s claims of bribery, he added: “The only reference to ‘presents’ comes years after the start of the removals … do people presume that they run a ‘bribe now, pay later’ scheme back then in Constantinople?”

One of the most contentious points in the debate is the legitimacy of an Ottoman permission document known as a “firman”, which is claimed to have authorised Lord Elgin removing the items from Greece.

There is only an Italian text referred to as a translation of this document.

Wilkinson said: “It was normal practice at the time that a copy would be kept in what was then Constantinople, and another copy would have been sent off to Athens.

“There would be a record in Istanbul and the Turks have gone through it in great detail over many decades and they can find nothing.”

Speaking to Sky News in 2024, Dr Zeynep Boz – head of combatting illicit trafficking for Turkey’s culture ministry – said there is no proof of the firman in the Ottoman archive.

“Despite extensive archival research, no such firman has been found. It is even difficult to call this document a translation when the original is not available,” she said at the time.

Torretta offers an explanation: “Burning the Ottoman governor’s archive was one of the first acts of the Greek revolution.”

While the arguments are not new, The Marbles also examines how other institutions have handled similar restitution cases.

In the film, Cox says if the marbles would have gone back to Athens already if they had found their way to Edinburgh and not London.

Back in 2023, the National Museum of Scotland returned The House Of Ni’isjoohl memorial pole to Canada.

Meanwhile, Glasgow’s Kevingrove Art Gallery Museum returned a shirt to the South Dakota Cultural Heritage Center in the US.

And when it comes to the Parthenon Sculptures – Germany’s Heidelberg University and The Vatican have both returned fragments to Greece.

The British Museum Act 1963 prevents treasures being legally given away by the British Museum.

The government has repeatedly it has no plans to change existing policy on restitution, and that it is up to the trustees of the museum to decide.

A spokesperson for the British Museum repeated a statement given to Sky News in July: “Discussions with Greece about a Parthenon Partnership are ongoing and constructive.”

The documentary scrutinises the ethics of foreign national treasures that were taken and are now housed in Western museums, but as it stands the institutional and governmental answers don’t appear to be changing.

The Marbles is in UK and Irish cinemas from today.

Shirley Valentine actress Pauline Collins has died “peacefully”, aged 85, surrounded by her family.

The actress, who starred in the first series of sitcom The Liver Birds, and became a household name in Upstairs Downstairs, had Parkinson’s disease for several years.

Her later role in the 1989 film Shirley Valentine, playing the lead character of the bored Liverpudlian housewife, earned her an Oscar nomination.

‘Iconic, strong-willed’

Her family said in a statement: “Pauline was so many things to so many people, playing a variety of roles in her life. A bright, sparky, witty presence on stage and screen. Her illustrious career saw her play politicians, mothers and queens.

“She will always be remembered as the iconic, strong-willed, vivacious and wise Shirley Valentine – a role that she made all her own.

“We were familiar with all those parts of her because her magic was contained in each one of them.

“More than anything, though, she was our loving mum, our wonderful grandma and great-grandma. Warm, funny, generous, thoughtful, wise, she was always there for us.

“And she was John (Alderton)’s life-long love. A partner, work collaborator, and wife of 56 years.

“We particularly want to thank her carers: angels who looked after her with dignity, compassion, and most of all love.

“She could not have had a more peaceful goodbye. We hope you will remember her at the height of her powers; so joyful and full of energy; and give us the space and privacy to contemplate a life without her.”

She married fellow actor John Alderton in 1969.

‘Nation’s sweetheart’

He described her as a “remarkable star”.

He said he worked with her more than any other actor in TV series, films and West End stage shows, and had “watched her genius at close quarters”.

He added: “What I saw was not only her brilliant range of diverse characters but her magic of bringing out the best in all of the people she worked with. She wanted everyone to be special and she did this by never saying ‘Look at me’.

“It’s no wonder that she was voted the nation’s sweetheart in the 1970s.

“She will always be remembered for Shirley Valentine, not only for her Oscar nomination or the film itself, but for clean-sweeping all seven awards when she portrayed her on Broadway in the stage play, in which she played every character herself.

“But her greatest performance was as my wife and mother to our beautiful children.”

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Born in Exmouth in 1940, Collins was raised near Liverpool and began her career as a teacher.

But after taking up acting part-time, she landed her first television role as a nurse in the series Emergency Ward 10.

Collins also won great acclaim for her role in 1997 film Paradise Road, which tells the story of a group of women in a Japanese prisoner of war camp who defy their captors by founding an orchestra.

The film also starred Glenn Close, Cate Blanchett and Frances McDormand.

In 2001, Collins was made an OBE for her services to drama.

Over the last two decades, Eddie Marsan has established himself as one of Britain’s most versatile and acclaimed character actors. From major blockbusters like the Sherlock Holmes films and Mission: Impossible III, to his roles on the TV series Ray Donovan, and more recently the sci-fi drama Supacell.

As a performer, he is a skilled observer. And one thing he’s come to notice a lot over the years is how few of his castmates tend to share his working-class roots.

“If you want to be an actor in this country, and you come from a disadvantaged background, you have to be exceptional to have a hope of a career,” he says. “If you come from a privileged background, you can be mediocre.”

Speaking after being named one of the new vice presidents of drama school Mountview, and meeting students at the establishment where he too first trained, Marsan is keen to stress why it’s so necessary to support young actors who can’t fund their careers.

“I came here when I was in my 20s… I was a bit lost, to be honest… I was serving an apprenticeship as a printer when Mountview offered me a place,” he says.

“There were no kinds of grants then, so for the first year an East End bookmaker paid my fees, then my mum and him got together and paid the second year, then Mountview gave me a scholarship for the third year, so I owe them everything.

“I didn’t earn a living as an actor for like six, seven years… years ago, actors could sign on and basically go on the dole while doing plays… now, in order to become an actor, you have to have the bank of mummy and daddy to bankroll you for those seven or eight years when you’re not going to earn a living.”

Marson and Dame Elaine Paige are both taking on ambassadorial roles to mark Mountview’s 80th anniversary, joining Dame Judi Dench, who has been president of the school since 2006.

“The parties are fantastic,” he jokes. “The two dames, they get so half-cut, honestly, you have to get an Uber to get them home!”

But he’s rather more serious about TV and film’s “fashion for posh boys”.

“When I went to America and I did 21 Grams and Vera Drake. I remember thinking, ‘great I’m going to have a career now,’ but I wasn’t the idea of what Britain was selling of itself.

“Coming back from Hollywood, a publicist said to me ‘when we get to London and do publicity for the film 21 Grams we’re going to come to you’… but no one was interested… I remember coming to Waterloo station and looking up and seeing all these posh actors selling Burberry coats and posters, and they hadn’t done anything compared to what I’d done, and yet they were the image that we were pushing as a country.”

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A 2024 Creative Industries, Policy, and Evidence Centre report found 8% of British actors come from working class backgrounds, compared to 20% in the 70s and 80s.

“Even a gangster movie now, 40 years ago you would have something like The Long Good Friday or Get Carter with people like Michael Caine or Bob Hoskins who were real working-class actors playing those parts, now you have posh boys playing working-class characters.”

Within the last five or six years, he says there has at least been “more of an effort to include people of colour”.

‘They’re scared of a level-playing field’

“What I find really interesting is, I’ve been an actor for 34 years, and I remember for the first 20 years going on a set and very rarely within the crew and within the cast would you see a black face, very rarely.

“One of the saving graces really are things now like Top Boy and Supacell, where you have members of the black community making dramas about their communities, that can’t be co-opted by the middle classes.”

“People like Laurence Fox complaining that it’s unfair, I never heard them complain when you never saw a black face, never once did they say anything. Now that people are trying to address it, they think it’s unfair…because they’re scared of a level playing field.”

Now, more than ever, Marsan says he feels compelled to point out what needs to change within the industry he works in.

“Look, social media is destroying cultural discourse. It’s making people become very binary… acting and drama is an exercise in empathy and if there’s one thing that we need more of at the moment it’s that.”