British Museum chairman George Osborne answered that he is “pretty optimistic” that the Parthenon Marbles will be repatriated to Athens, although he admits that issue has been “intractable” over time.

In a lengthy interview published over the weekend by the Sunday Times, Osborne said a return of the iconic friezes would ostensibly be part of an antiquities exchange deal.

“I’ve always said that this has been the museum’s most intractable problem for 200 years…So you have to be a bit humble when you turn up and say you are going to solve it. But I’m still pretty optimistic.

“If we all come at this problem with open minds, there’s a landing zone that satisfies the absolutely understandable requirements of the Greek state and our own requirements and laws. And if we pull it off, we’ll have some great objects coming here,” he stressed.