The unveiling of the latest appalling public statue – of the late Queen and her (rather more lifelike) corgis, in Rutland, a delightful little county that doesn't deserve such an outrage – prompts an excellent piece by Ben Lawrence in the Telegraph. He's right that 'the biggest problem with modern statues is that they're awful' – think, if you can bear to, of the Diana statue in Kensington Gardens, or the giant Lovers looming over St Pancras station. However, there are exceptions – one, indeed, being the statue of John Betjeman that also stands at St Pancras, another the Larkin statue (also by Martin Jennings) in Hull. Only recently a pretty good statue of Coleridge (by Nicholas Dimbleby) was unveiled at Ottery St Mary. I should also mention that Lichfield has two good public statues – of Erasmus Darwin and St Chad, by Peter Walker. However, these are outliers, and Ben Lawrence is surely right that 'the age of the statue is dead' – the age, that is, of the naturalistic public monument, a statue that served a purpose, was skilfully made, and invoked a kind of grandeur that has become quite alien to our levelling, denigrating culture. Alas.
