Brazen Images

Mr Jenrick, the Communities Secretary, thinks that monuments to controversial figures 'are almost always best explained and contextualised, not taken and hidden away'. Oddly, I feel that they are almost always best taken and hidden away, not explained and contextualised. We've talked about this before, but the government's proposed legislation in this area brings the topic up again. 

Of course when you put it as I have deliberately done, my position sounds entirely unreasonable. In fact I would much rather monuments and statues were only removed after proper public debate and accountable decision-making, because that's how we develop our self-understanding as a society. However it's worth remembering that the authorities in Bristol had talked for years about de-plinthing Edward Colston, the removal of whom sparked this whole current debate off, and had never quite got round to it. Equally, any fair-minded person baulks a bit about our public art being subject to the passing whims and enthusiasms of crowds and 'town hall militants', as Mr Jenrick puts it, but we should recall that it is often passing whims and enthusiasms which result in statues being there in the first place. Coming from a background in history I'm fairly relaxed about public art changing on a regular basis as this is what's always happened, and who may move from hero of the decade to persona non grata is an interesting reflection of social change, rather than an outrage to be resisted. 

One of my favourite instances comes from that comfortingly mad tome A272, an Ode to a Road by Dutch folly enthusiasts Pieter and (the late) Rita Boogart. On their journey along and around that thoroughly English thoroughfare they came across, in monumentally bronze equestrian form, Field Marshal Lord Strathnairn. This statue was originally erected in 1895 in Knightsbridge, outside Harrods, in fact, but was eventually removed as an obstruction to traffic. It was spotted in a scrapyard in 1965 by a Mr Northcott who was told that if he could move the damn thing, he could have it for free, and move it he did, to Foley Manor near Liphook where it stands resolutely if irrelevantly at the entrance to the drive. Like almost every military man of his day, Hugh Rose, 1st Baron Strathnairn, was implicated in a variety of Imperial escapades including the Crimean War and suppressing the Indian Revolt, but on a personal level seems to have been quite a good egg to judge by some of the anecdotes concerning him. In his current location, though, the locals have neither knowledge of nor interest in the identity and achievements of this once-lauded general. They know him only, so the Boogarts relate, as 'The Banana Man', owing to the fruit-like appearance of his plumed helmet. In his case 'contextualisation' would be rather a shame.

The closest public statues to me are in Guildford, and it's interesting to think of the objections that might be raised to any of them. The Surrey Scholar by Alan Sly (2002) at the bottom of the High Street depicts a young chap running to a lecture, and the only quibble might be against his sex: perhaps a female scholar would be preferable. Then there are two sculptural depictions of Alice of Wonderland fame, Alice and the White Rabbit (Edwin Russell, 1984) and Alice Through the Looking Glass (Jeanne Argent, 1990); again, surely no problem with these unless we are very sensitive about the Revd. Charles Dodgson's familiar relationships with small girls. Somewhere on the University of Surrey campus nearby is a statue of Alan Turing, which I've never seen, and he is definitely safe.

I'm not quite so confident for George Abbot (Faith Winter, 1993). who stands at the top of the High Street, the only real and genuinely local figure of the lot: Turing stayed in Guildford in the summer as a child, which is a bit tenuous. Abbot (d.1633) has the distinction of being the only Archbishop of Canterbury to have killed someone while in office, and had the statue depicted him with one hand clapped to his mouth and a crossbow in the other having just realised he's accidentally despatched a deer-keeper while out hunting, it would be far more interesting than the staid figure we actually see. 

Seeing that ++Abbot had written a tome entitled Geography, or a Brief Description of the Whole World in 1599 I thought, well, a sixteenth-century clergyman almost certainly had some unpalatable opinions which might be found therein, and so it proved. The African races get off lightly, Abbot merely remarking that the inhabitants of the coastal states of West Africa are 'blacker than all other men', but he describes the Jews as 'runnagates', 'scattered upon the face of the earth', 'a curse upon them and their children for killing Christ'; and as for the Muslims, his salacious account of the founding of Islam and the character of its prophet culminates in the statement that he was 'much given to lasciviousness, and all uncleanness of body, even with very beasts'. Oh dear. You won't tell anyone, will you, so poor Archbishop Abbot can remain unmolested on his plinth?