Boris Johnson came face to face with his muse on July 1, 2004. At about 5pm, he wrote a few days later, for you know how the new prime minister prides himself on detail.
They met in the gift shop of the British Museum: the shadow arts minister and the Greek politician, or rather a plaster cast of a 2nd-century Roman copy of a bronze bust of Pericles by the sculptor Kresilas created in the 5th century BC. “I stood before it and reflected that I was only three removes away from the position of the sculptor who stood before one of the greatest statesmen who ever lived,” Johnson wrote. And even better: he got a discount because it was slightly marked.
Pericles has been
