Ian Jenkins (Senior Curator of Antiquities, British Museum) died suddenly last Saturday 28 November 2020.

We disagreed of course on the proper abode of the 'Elgin Marbles', but he was a very great scholar/connoisseur and good friend over many years, the last of them blighted by Parkinson's, and I am very sad that he is no longer with us.

What not many people will know is that he came from what would once have been called a 'humble', that is a working-class, background: his mother, he told me as we were visiting the Greek section of London's West Norwood cemetery together, had been 'in service'.

He wrote many excellent books and exhibition catalogues, including on the Parthenon sculptures, but my favourite remains Vases and Volcanoes: the Collection of Sir William Hamilton.

More controversially, he convened and edited the proceedings of a conference devoted to the 'cleaning' of those Parthenon Marbles confined in the B.M.

A recent, revealing interview with him was published in The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies' ARGO magazine, you can read this by folowing the link here.

Rest in peace.

Professor Paul Cartledge

A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture Emeritus

University  of Cambridge Faculty of Classics