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Home / People / Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin

Historical person

Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin

1766–1841

Elgin inherited his earldom as a child and entered diplomatic and military service. As British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799, he sponsored the recording of antiquities in Athens and authorised agents to remove sculptures and architectural pieces from the Acropolis.

The collection was later purchased by the British government and placed in the British Museum. The legality and ethics of the removal have been disputed since Elgin's lifetime, including criticism from Lord Byron.

In Mary Beard’s The Parthenon, the Venetian bombardment of 1687, Lord Elgin’s removal of sculptures and the creation of modern museums turned the monument into a focus for arguments about national identity, archaeology and cultural ownership. In George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman and the Dragon, Flashman then joins Lord Elgin’s expedition towards Beijing during the final campaign of the Second Opium War. Captured by Qing forces, he enters the orbit of the Xianfeng Emperor and the concubine who will become Empress Dowager Cixi before witnessing the allied occupation and destruction of the Old Summer Palace. In Julia Golding’s The Elgin Conspiracy, A death threat against Lord Elgin draws Dora Fitz-Pennington and Jacob Sandys into the bitter controversy surrounding the classical sculptures removed from Athens.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin (2 series)

The Flashman Papers in Order

by George MacDonald Fraser 12 books 4.2(80,547)

The Flashman Papers present the supposed memoirs of Sir Harry Paget Flashman, the bully expelled from Rugby School in Tom Brown’s School Days who becomes a decorated Victorian soldier despite being a coward, liar, opportunist and sexual predator. George MacDonald Fraser places this fictional witness inside documented nineteenth-century…

All books in this series

Regency Secrets in Order

by Julia Golding 4 books 4.1(3,749)

The Regency Secrets series pairs Dora Fitz-Pennington, an independent aristocratic investigator, with physician and former army surgeon Dr Jacob Sandys. Beginning in 1812, their cases expose murder and conspiracy beneath the cultivated surface of Regency society, from secret clubs and classical antiquities to literary manuscripts and wartime espionage.…

All books in this series

Non Fiction

Non Fiction featuring Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin (1 book)

Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.