“For years I have argued against holidays and giving back the Elgin Marbles. I was wrong about both.” With these words, famous British writer Howard Jacobson, winner of the prestigious Booker award, begins his recount of his experience in Greece, in an article published by The Independent.

Mr. Jacobson admits that until recently, he was possibly the only English writer who had never been to Greece. In fact, although there was no prejudice involved, the whole idea of travelling to Greece never crossed his mind. “It was Zorba who initially put me off Greece. I mean that in the gentlest way. There was no prejudice involved, just a sceptical reluctance to buy into all that male vitality stuff. Like Alan Bates, I too wore a white suit in the 1960s and was suffering writer’s block – that’s if you can call not knowing how to start a block – but I was damned if I was going to let some prolix, santori-playing peasant tell me I was bourgeois and uptight”, says the famous author.

His second brush with the Greek people came many years later, when he was teaching at a language school in Oxford. A group of young Greek men – fleeing war – turned up there with their mothers who not only accompanied them to the discotheque where they pointed out suitable girlfriends for them, but on occasions even barged on to the dancefloor to extricate the young women in question from the arms of other men. “These could be Jewish mothers”, the author thought. “And in their deference and shyness, their sons could have been Jewish boys.”

H. Jacobson admits that, when the subject of the Elgin Marbles came up in conversation he was adamantine in his conviction that they belonged to the British people now, that pillage cuts all ways, and that there would be no such thing as museums if there were no such thing as plunder.

However, a recent trip to Athens and Crete was enough to change his mind:

“Α funny thing happens, reader, when you wander round the marvellous Acropolis Museum in Athens and note a signal absence, and an even funnier thing happens when you find yourself dining with Greeks on a rooftop restaurant beneath the Parthenon itself. Suddenly, you know the Marbles don’t belong to you,” Mr Jacobson stresses.

In fact, the columnist describes this overwhelming sudden rush of feeling as following: “A mad impulse grips me. I will get them back for you, I want to say. I look into the gentle brownness of their eyes, as Byron will have looked before me, in an ecstasy of comradeship. Not only will I get them back to you, I am desperate to tell them, I will throw in St Paul’s Cathedral.”

Ηaving returned the Elgin Marbles to their rightful owners, albeit mentally, Mr Jacobson visited Crete and stayed in Chania for a while. “Good restaurants, charming people, a restored synagogue and sun.” This is how the author describes this picturesque city and goes on to describe another amusing encounter with Greek people: “Here, behind the reception desk, it is again – four Greek women for the sound of whose intimate, throaty laughter Odysseus would have stayed away from home for ever.” Howard Jacobson concludes his article with a simple but wonderful advice: “Travel, reader. It loosens the mind.”