The Rest Is History - 76. Statues: Trafalgar Square

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

In the first of a three part series Tom and Dominic take a walking tour of central London to examine the statues of Trafalgar Square and explore the stories behind them.  A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Jack Davenport Exec Producer Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Welcome to The Rest Is History, our very first on-location recording. And Tom Holland, with our unerring eye for glamour, we have chosen this fantastic spot. It's literally a roundabout. Yeah. We're in the middle of a roundabout, but it's a distinguished roundabout because it's Trafalgar Square. You can hear the police going by. Yeah, police going by you're shouting over the siren that's how i like to think we'll uh confirming your darkest suspicions of london um we're in we're standing

beneath the statue of charles i which is london's oldest bronze statue it is um and is in fact the the center of lond, isn't it? Because this is where the Eleanor Cross used to stand. Yeah. So the cross was taken down in 1647. So these were the crosses put up by Edward I in memory of his wife, Eleanor of Castile. And on this spot,

we have this bronze statue of Charles I, which went up in 1633 so during his lifetime so this isn't a statue commemorating someone who's dead unlike most of the statues that we're going to be talking about today because that's what we're doing isn't it we're talking statues so that's why we've come here so obviously trafalgar square got charles i but we've also got nelson we've got a load of uh generals who ken livingston famously didn't know who they were and wanted to take them down. And then we may go down and look at Parliament Square and look at the statues there as well.

Statues are obviously a very hot-button issue. So I think this is a perfect place to do our first on-the-spot broadcast. And the question, Tom, keep or cancel? I think we should ask keep or cancel. Yes. OK. So should we focus on Charles I? Yeah, like art collector. Because as you say, I mean, this was not intended to go up in a public space. So this was for a private garden. Is that right?

Yeah. So it was one of Charles I's kind of big supporters. And then obviously Civil War happened and Charles I had his head chopped off just down the road actually just down towards um and so parliament ordered this to be destroyed but it got it got hidden and then with the restoration in 1660 it went straight back up yeah um and it got put in this place i think 1675 or something yeah and looking looking weirdly looking down at the spots of his own death yes which is a sort of strange and also of course looking down at the spot of his own death. Yes. Which is a sort of strange... And also, of course, looking down towards Parliament, where there is a statue of Oliver Cromwell. Yeah, it's great that they're facing each other, isn't it?

It is. And obviously, we're going to be talking about whether, you know, whether it's right that statues of certain people should be up in... Yes. I've always felt that having a statue of Charles I at one end of Whitehall, the great avenue, the artery of power in London, and a statue of Cromwell at the other is kind of the perfect compromise. It's the perfect way to memorialize the Civil War. It's the physical embodiment of our podcast that said that everything was 17th century, isn't it?

Yes, it is. That's what it is. It is. So, come on, Tom, would you get rid? Would you keep? Oh, I'd definitely keep it. Yeah, I've got to keep it. But you'd have to keep Cromwell as well. Well, we will come to that.

Because that's a bit more controversial. But I think also Charles I is a great one to start with. Because as you said, it's the oldest statue here, really. And it focuses the question on why do statues exist? So the whole debate about, you know, what statues should we have? Should we have statues at all? It's not a given that statues stand. For the middle ages, 16th century, they didn't have statues like this. So why did they suddenly appear? And then going into the 19th century, into the 20th century, why is there a sudden glut?

And I think that probably the best way to answer that is to go and look at another statue in Trafalgar Square, which is a statue of Charles's son, James II, which stands in front of the National Gallery and is a good deal less noisy. So let's go there. Okay. So Tom, we're approaching this next statue, which is one you're very keen on because I think it's going to fit your thesis, isn't it? It does, which is why I wanted to bring you here. I mean, as I approach, it's like, what is it, a Roman? Well, so it's James II. Okay. Son of Charles I.

Yes. Younger brother of Charles II. Famously kicked out in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. So this is Grinling Gibbons, put up in 1686, two years before he got kicked out. So he's only been king for a year. It's not a memorial to uh to a great king but he's as you say dressed in in roman armor he's got a cloak he's got a he's got the little thigh boots um yeah and it it focuses attention on the roots of this sudden mania for putting up statues because until this point you're not putting up statues of kings which is why there aren't statues of edward the fourth

or richard the third or there is supposedly so there is supposedly an older statue which is out of king alfred which is said to have been sculpted in the reign of richard the second okay um put up in westminster and then moved to Southwark. But actually it's pretty clear it's Victorian. I think there's a portrait bust of Elizabeth the first on St. Dunstan's on Fleet Street. But aside from that, it's really here that it begins. And the fact that he's in Roman dress shows that what's going on here is an attempt to ape and mimic Roman styles. And it's in Greece and Rome that you put up statues of emperors, obviously,

but also great men, because it's the best way to memorialize them. You don't have photographs, you don't have other ways of preserving their memory. So you put the statues up. Why are there no statues in the Middle Ages? Because they've fallen out of habit with the fall of the Roman empire, but also with the, and you will know what I'm about to say. It's Christianity. The coming of Christianity. So there is, Christianity brings a deep anxiety about

graven images. So you will get, you will obviously. Statues of saints. You will get statues of saints and you'll get statues of biblical kings. And on tombs, of course you get images of kings and of knights and of effigies. But you don't get standalone statues like this. And really, this is an importation from Renaissance Italy. But is it also, I mean, he's famously an absolutist, an admirer of European absolutism. So putting up the statue is quite a strong symbol, isn't it?

Yeah. You know, I'm a Roman emperor. I'm going to be an absolute. I mean, the inscriptions in Latin, Jacobus Secundus Dei Gratia, by the grace of God, it of yeah you know i'm i'm i'm a roman emperor i'm yes you know going to be an absolute and i mean the inscriptions in latin jacobus secundus de gratia by the grace of god king of king of england scotland france he's still claiming france at this stage as i like and fidiae defense and defender of the faith even though he's catholic um yeah well so there's a i mean he could claim that he could justifiably claim that and nobody else could because there was a title

awarded to henry eighth when he was a Catholic. So essentially the tradition of putting up statues is a culturally contingent one that is bred of Renaissance and then early modern responses to the Roman heritage. And it exists in tension with the older christian suspicion of graven images and i think that that is something that we see right the way up to the present day tom here's the thing we're talking the keeper cancel i mean he's somebody who was canceled he was canceled he was kicked out of the country and this actually got taken down i did okay that's what i was going to ask and that so when did it come back up you know? I think it got taken down on the orders of William, and then I think William gave it, said, fine, put it back up again.

Essentially because, of course, this is in the context of the execution of Charles I and the abolition of the monarchy. So there's a nervousness about cancelling a king. And I think that's also the other thing is that in the 17th century, when you're putting up statues of kings, you're also putting up images of the idea of monarchy and of the idea of the kingdom that he's ruling. So that's the list of all the kingdoms that you get on the base of the statue. This is an image, not just of James, but of the imperial power of the British monarchy. But here's the thing, Tom. A big theme that runs

through this whole statue debate is, you know, you're commemorating people, you're enshrining them, you're indoctrinating the public in, you know, in what they represent. And we've been standing here now for four minutes or something. And, you know, quite a few people, it's quieter than usual, but quite a few people have walked past. They've looked at us and thought, who are these freaks holding microphones and talking to each each other but nobody has looked at that statue i mean it's just a to most people it's just a piece of decorative art isn't it yeah completely that's and that that of course is the issue for ken livingston who i think in 2000 when he was mayor of london he wanted to raise to get rid of of two other statues but we'll come down to them because I love those statues.

Yes. But also, I think while we're on the theme of Romans and aping Rome, it would be obvious to look at the most obvious Roman monument in Trafalgar Square, which is the triumphal column, which is surmounted by Nelson. Yes. Nelson. Because the idea of erecting a massive phallic column to victory is a paradigmatically Roman one. And the debate over Nelson, so I think Afio Hirsch recently suggested that Nelson should fall. This is an ancient debate. So in Rome you have Trajan's Column, which is erected to celebrate Trajan's victories over the Dacians and was surmounted by a statue of Trajan.

That statue kind of vanished, came down some point in the Middle Ages and was replaced by a statue of St. Peter. And the current debate about whether we should pull down the statue, say, of imperial generals and replace them with somebody more in tune with the spirit of the age, it's a replication of what happened with Trajan and Saint Peter. It's an old debate. Yeah, so it's an old debate.

So do you want to do Nelson next or do you want to do the intervening statues? What should we do? Let's go and look at Nelson and then look at the ones who who flank him so the nelson one we can probably carry on talking as we walk towards it so the nelson one um it's much later actually than i thought so it's 1840s um it's it's so it's not put up in the immediate aftermath of his death i think the duke of wellington backed an appeal so there was like a lot of these statues there was a big sort of public subscription and um and yeah the irony is of course he's on this statue and he's towering over but he also was a very short man so this is a you could argue it's a sort of massive act of compensation

because i think he was five foot six and apparently he's not wearing his eye patch on the top is he not but his arm is missing? But his arm is missing. Yeah, but his arm is missing, exactly. So, Tom, I mean, most of our listeners will probably already know that for British listeners anyway, Nelson is one of the absolute titanic figures. He's the hero of Trafalgar. Certainly I was brought up as a boy thinking that Nelson was one of the absolutely untouchable heroic figures of British history. Well, it's Trafalgar Square.

So it's put up in the aftermath of his death at the Battle of Trafalgar, which essentially ensures that France can't invade Britain and establishes the supremacy of the Royal Navy for a century and more. So in that sense, it's different to the statues of Charles I and James II because this is consciously a monument to victory yeah it's a

monument to british greatness yeah it is exactly and again that's you know that that is very very powerfully in the roman tradition and i guess that that's what now makes people slightly uncomfortable but the statue nelson is also different from the first two we talked about and it is you know people queue up to have their they they have their photos taken on the steps don't they i mean maybe not because they love nelson and struggling the lions but because they're aware of it as a sort of icon of britishness yes um so i think i'm not right in thinking that uh at the olympic opening ceremony when daniel craig and the queen fly past in a helicopter they fly past nelson and I can't remember what he did. He sort of looks up at them or raises his hat, or gives a little wink or something.

And there are kind of bronze images that attach to the base of the collar. Scenes from the battle. Scenes from four battles made from melted iron of French cannon. And the one on the side facing towards Whitehall is a Trafalgar, and it shows one of the people firing a gun is a black sailor, a man whose name was, I've got it written down, his name was George Ryan, age 23, shooting a musket. Really?

So it's sort of a, there's a bit of nice multiculturalism there. Well, maybe that'll preserve it. But of course, Nelson is now controversial because people argue about his relationship to slavery. There's this letter where he's supposedly defending slaving interests, which I think the consensus now seems to be the letters are forgery. And it's forged after his death by anti-abolitionists

who wanted to claim Nelson's support for their cause. Though the jury is still slightly out on that. But yes, if you want to, I mean, Nelson's one of the two people that if you want to be very iconoclastic, you say, tear Churchill down and tear Nelson down. And the want to, I mean, Nelson's one of the two people that if you want to be very iconoclastic, you say tear Churchill down and tear Nelson down. And the Nelson thing, you know, lots of people, including me, got very sort of excited about that, hot under the collar. Because Nelson is seen as synonymous with Britain and Britishness and British pride and all this stuff.

But he's also, he's a kind of dashing flamboyant character. Yeah. So he has all kinds of shenanigans with Emma Hamilton. Suffered very badly from diarrhoea, Nelson. Thank you, Dominic, for someone who's supposed to be batting for the British heroes. I forgot what side I'm on, sorry. Get back on side. Yeah, he's a very charismatic figure, Nelson.

Very charismatic figure. I mean, he's actually not quite Churchillian in that he had colossal flaws. But people loved him for his flaws, I think. Yeah, agreed. So you wouldn't take Nelson down, would you? I mean, come on. I wouldn't take Nelson down because I think that for as long as the French have the Arc de Triomphe, we have the right to have Nelson's column. When they take Arc de Triomphe down down we'll maybe think about and also i mean it's kind of um disarming i think hitler was planning

to if he occupied britain he was planning to take nelson's column to berlin as a kind of victory that would have been awful and the lions so in a way the lions are symbols of britishness aren't they i suppose yeah um but it's a symbol of you, of a battle that saved Britain from what I think would have been a fairly unpleasant occupation. Gallic occupation. No one would want that. No one would want that. So I'm in favour of keeping him. Let's keep him. Very good. I'm glad to hear that. All right, Tom. So what next? What have you got next? So famously, Trafalgar Square has four plinths.

One of them is occupied by a king, so like Charles I, like James II, and that is George IV, who is almost universally recognized to have been one of our worst kings. I've got some good facts about George IV, especially for this podcast. Do you want to give them? I do. Do you know what he had for breakfast? A lot. The Duke of Wellington wrote that in 1830 he had for breakfast a pigeon and beef

steak pie, three parts of a bottle of Moselle a glass of dry champagne two glasses of port and a glass of brandy followed by a large dose of laudanum i think don't you think that's the kind of breakfast that needs to be memorialized in our yeah i mean i but the other thing is he was so fat he weighed 20 stone i mean hit that man on that horse is not 20 stone. He ended up thinking that he'd led the charge at Waterloo. I think he'd gone completely mad at the end. But he was so... Sir David Wilkie said he was so obese, he looked like, quote,

a great sausage stuffed into the covering. Well, I think... He doesn't look like that, does he? So, I mean, a completely worthless king. Yeah. But actually, you know what? What's great is that we've done three pretty worthless kings yeah they're all i mean really useless king i mean that's why i think two of them one of them got executed one of them got driven into exile and

one of them ended up looking like a sausage meat so yeah so i think only maybe only in britain i don't know would we have three such three awful kings memorialized in our sort of most famous square? So, yeah, George IV. The producer is saying tell everybody his dates, and I think we should. Say, Dominic, what are his dates? So he's early 19th century, isn't he? He's the regent. He's the regent for George IV when he goes mad.

Dominic, when did he die? He dies in 1823. Something like that. I think something like that. Something like that. Ted Valance we had on to talk about Magna Carta, and he didn't know King John's date, so I think I can be excused not knowing George IV. Right, so that's George IV done with, with impressive scholarship and learning. Yeah, I mean, I think people are getting a lot from this podcast. And then we've got two generals that we'll come to, and then we've got the fourth Blinch,

which famously has been kept empty. Okay, so the two generals, Ken Livingstone, when he was mayor of london said let's tear them down no one knows who they are they're not relevant that was as i remember he wanted he wanted to bring them down not because they were um imperialists but because he didn't know who who they were yeah they were so he said oh they could just ghastly old generals so this one charles james napier i'm almost tempted to ask the producer if he knows anything about he's shaking his head um he's got a magnificent nose james napier was no he's got really good he's got a wellington style nose he does he looks very impressive he's got a nice

sword great so he is the man who conquered sindh in what's pakistan um in the 1840s i have sinned which in latin is pekavi so he's supposed to have said but he didn't because it was a joke in punch yeah but it's a great story that they sent this message home yes pekavi i have sinned uh but he didn't it's so disappointing but he was also he was a war hero in uh peninsula war i think yeah before that that's right um but he was he did not deny that the conquest of Sindh... Yeah, so it's erected by public subscription. The most numerous contributors being private soldiers.

Isn't that touching? Very touching. But he didn't deny that the conquest of Sindh had been a... A rascally business. A rascally business. He said, our objects in conquering India, the object of all our cruelties, do you know what it was? Money. Money.

Money. Money is what he says. Every shilling of this has been picked out of blood, wiped and put into the murderer's pockets. We shall yet suffer for the crime as sure as there is a God in heaven. Yes. And he also, he kind of basically foretold the um the rebellion the rebellion 1857 yeah um and and worried that british officers and indian officers weren't kind of mixing yeah so in a way i mean to the degree that to the degree that victorian generals are woke he's a woke victorian general what do you say i well he sort of has his cake and eats it doesn't he i mean he conquers it but it says it's a crime everybody and takes all the money and then says,

oh, I'm actually a very kind person. I feel really bad about it. But isn't that Britain generally? Yeah, I mean, that's us generally. So would you cancel him? Well, I wouldn't cancel him. I mean, I wouldn't cancel anybody. Well, I might cancel someone when we get later on. I've got a few up my sleeve I might cancel just to annoy the listeners. I dread to think.

Would you keep him would you i mean you're you're more work than i am so maybe you would uh massively work i would you like to see well a crane pulling him down the truth is the truth is i don't really care i don't feel strongly about it one way or the other i'm i mean i'm inherently quite conservative yeah in that i don't like i don't like repainting our sitting room, whereas my wife is always repainting the sitting room. That's exactly the analogy that you should be reaching for. So whenever she does it, I always think, yeah, that's brilliant.

It's worth the hassle. Right. But left to me, I wouldn't do it. So left to me, I wouldn't do it. But if they came up with some amazing new scheme, I'm sure I'd be happy. However, having said that, two things against that. One is this thing is erected by public subscription. So I do kind of think that if something's been erected by public subscription,

in a way you kind of have a duty to honour that. I also think that it's like a building. It reminds you of a particular moment in history. And also, I'm not confident in our ability to replace it with something better. And the reason for that is that I look at the fourth plinth, which has been kept empty for long, and now is put up for public subscription. And there's a kind of melting ice cream and a fly and a cherry and things. It's not great, is it?

Well, I mean, the idea of putting up something kind of edgy was, you know, I mean, it was edgy the first time. But it just goes round and round. And so now it's very conventional. So in a way, the edgiest thing that you could do would perhaps be to put up a statue. Another general. Another general or an admiral or something. That would be a brave statement so i think we should take a break yes and then let's return to this issue as we walk to the other okay um

victorian general okay all right see you after the break i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews splash of showbiz gossip and on our q a we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. We are Talking Statues. We're here in Trafalgar Square. And we have moved on to Ken Livingston's second target,

as it was 20 years ago, Major General Sir Henry Havelock. KCB. KCB. And his brave companions in arms during the campaign in India, 1857. So this is during the rebellion that you were talking about, which used to be called the Indian Mutiny. And there's a nice um quote from havelock soldiers your labors your privations your sufferings and your valor will not be forgotten by a grateful country and again erected by public subscription so again you know you could to me tom this spot that we're on is a piece of Victorian Britain. You get a sense by being here,

which you wouldn't get if it were removed, of the sensibility of the age. You do. And Havelock was a morally serious figure. So he was baptist who made all his soldiers do bible classes um and performed heroically in the campaign in india i think ended up dying in luck now he died of dysentery died of dysentery so again you're yeah the flow of yeah the flow of shit which is uh um but tell me obviously now the indian mutineers it was once called the rebellion is now itself very controversial right so so this is the tension so it's as you say erected by public subscription it absolutely this is in a way a kind of a you know it's it's the equivalent of news archive it's news footage from the the 19th century. We don't have anything

comparable to that. So if you want to have a feeling of that, of what it was like in the middle of the Victorian period, this is a place to come. Absolutely.

Yeah. I mean, our producer was saying to me, it's not relevant. But I mean, you've made that case about any historic artefact, I would argue,

or historic building, that they're not, in a verticom, as relevant. I mean, clearly, it's not relevant, but that's, to me, what's valuable about it. There is a counter, so there are two counter arguments to keeping it. One is that we have taken statues down from Trafalgar Square before.

So you know who was here in the 19th century but got removed? It's Edward Jenner. So we've kept the generals, but we've removed the guy who pushed for vaccinations. So why was he taken down? I think he was taken down kind of late 19th century. Right. So I'd actually be all in favor of replacing Sir Henry Havelock. But surely you could put Jenner instead of the 4th bent.

Put him on the 4th bent. Yeah. Well, I would, I think that itna got moved to fourth bent yeah well well i would i think that it would be nice to bring jenna back particularly after the past year and put him back in in trafalgar square i'd be in favor of that and the other issue is that um when this got put up there were there were no people really from india in britain yeah so um this was a us and them situation in the mid-19th century. That's not the case. And if there are people of Indian descent

who are Londoners, who are British, who are walking past, who find this upsetting, then I don't think it's worth keeping him. But when you get down to Parliament Square, you're going to be making that same argument about Cromwell and all the Irish people in Britain. Well, we'll come to that.

Which is what people made in the 19th century. We'll come to that. Which is what people made in the 19th century. We'll come to that. But I think that it's not for me to say. Again, I don't really care. Well, if you're going to take him down, it's definitely not for you to say. I mean, I think we can agree about that. Well, I would take him down and replace him with Jenna. Okay.

Would be mine. So I'm going to cancel him. Well. But you're not. I put Jenna on the fourth plinth. I'm sick of the modern art on the fourth plinth. I'm sick of the modern art. It's not clever and it's not grown up.

Yeah. Now let's walk over to... There's an interesting statue over this side, which I might cancel. Okay, so a controversial... Who I think should go on the fourth plinth. An equestrian statue of Elizabeth II.

Oh, he's such a monarchist. Are you hoping for... Does the Queen listen? Are you hoping for recognition? No, but I think that it would be in tune with the traditions of the square. What about Prince Philip? No, because he's not a king. Make up for his disappointments in the World Cup of Post.

Maybe. Maybe. What about Prince Philip? No, because he's not a king. Make up for his disappointments in the World Cup of Costs. Well, maybe. Maybe. Maybe. No, I think it's... Yeah. Sir Tom Holland here. It's meant for the equestrian statue. Let's put a monocle.

Sir Tom Holland. That's what it's for. Decorated for... But I'm only saying that. Services to royal podcasting i'm saying that to be edgy is that edgy it's the edgiest thing you can say and it would be and it would be the first one exactly it would be the first one i beat you to it so we've got three busts here where there's someone doing some drilling so we probably shouldn't go too close it's the

late admirals those are admirals these are world war umals. So Jellicoe and Beatty who actually hated each other from World War I and then Admiral Cunningham from World War II. Do you know a fact about General Cunningham's bust? Is he the one who was called Mary?

I didn't know that but that's a very good fact. So he had a bust as well. He was called Mary and he had a bust. Yeah. Well, we should definitely keep him then.

In this bust of Admiral Cunningham there is an empty bottle of guinness drunk by the sculptor and used as a sort of centerpiece of the um of the bus now obviously nobody will cancel them presumably i mean they they helped to win the world wars surely you wouldn't get rid of them would you tom no i'll keep them and actually there's a man drilling so we can't say any more about them because um we don't want the drilling to overpower your dulcet tones. And also, it's nice to have someone called Mary. Yeah.

So there's your female components of the square. Okay. So we are now heading back up to the National Gallery. And we're going to look at someone who I suspect, Dominic, you do think should be cancelled. Definitely, definitely. There's two things I really... As you know, Tom, I'm a very passionate anti-slavery person. And also I'm very passionate about people paying their taxes.

Yes. So any sort of tax dodger... Tax dodging slave owner. Right. I think would absolutely not belong here. And especially if they dress up with a symbol of Italian fascism, which would be awful. And as luck would have it.

So a slave owning, tax dodging person with a symbol of fascism. Yeah. And here we are in front of Natom. Who's this? It's George Washington. It is. Presented to the people of Great Britain and Ireland by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1921. So here's George Washington. So this is

clearly a gift, I think, post-World War I. We fought together in World War I. The Commonwealth of Virginia has given this copy of the original, which is one of the most famous statues of Washington, which I think one of the most famous statues of Washington, which I think stands in the Virginia State House. It's a nice symbol of Anglo-American amity.

Would you keep or get rid? So Washington's coming down in America. That's the thing. A lot of Americans are getting rid of Washington. Isn't the story that it's it's american soil apparently because he said he would never set foot again on the soil of london is that right something like that um so yes there's a claim that he's actually on american soil again i have no strong feelings uh tell me about the um the rods the fast game the fast game so those are the the symbols um

born by the lictors who are the bodyguards of the Roman magistrates, which then got used by Mussolini as the symbol of his movement at much the same time as this statue was donated. But what's nice about this, though, Tom, is it completes the loop, doesn't it, with the Roman connotations of Charles and James. Yes, and it's a reminder, actually, of the fact that George Washington was born a British subject. Yes. So in a way, you know, he does rank as a great Briton, I guess. I mean, I wouldn't really get rid of him

because I think it's magnanimous of us to have him. Don't you? I think it is. Yes, it is. It's a tribute to our sporting ability to accept and defeat. It's good sponsorship. Now, we haven't had any women, other than your references to your putative statue of the Queen,

your knighthood statue, as I call it. So I think if we go around the corner, there's a very good statue of a woman, and one that I don't think anyone in their right mind would want to. Well, although, having said that, a columnist in The Guardian, Gary Young, wrote a very passionately argued long essay arguing that all statues, you should be consistent and you should get rid of all statues.

What did you make of that? I thought it was a brilliant essay. And I thought it's argument that every statue should be brought down. So he listed people he didn't approve of. And then he listed people he did approve of. And he said that they should all come down um so he listed people he didn't approve of and then he listed people he did approve of and he said that they should all come down yeah um he just didn't believe in statues and in in memorializing people in stone as a sort of oppressive you know reminder of well essentially i mean he it was it was an anxiety about graven images um serving the the graven images threatened the moral health of the people yeah that's a very old theme and a gift to you and a gift to you you must be delighted when you saw that i was so excited

because essentially it's it's it's protestantism redux it's it's the reformation at its most passionate and uh absolutist um and i i thought you know, it had the massive benefit of being consistent and brutally honest. And it did recognise the fact that statues are not a given, that it's perfectly possible to have cities without statues. But Tom, as people said, you know, you're going to have a hard job

persuading, you know, Stoke City supporters to get rid of the statue of Stanley Matthews. Or my team, Wolves, we have statues of Stan Cullis, Billy Wright and Sir Jack Haywood which mean a lot to I mean to Wolves fans they're a symbol of our... They're idolatry. Well we're not worshipping them. Yeah you kind of are. Well and also and also the fact that that anyone you know the whole argument about statues is well they were people of their time. Yeah. So even Stanley Matthews probably had not entirely constructed views

about gender relations or Russian Empire or whatever. Everybody did. You'll always be able to find a reason. I mean, this is probably Gary Young's anxiety, that by definition, everybody who in the past will be wrong, right? But that's why

it's fundamentally theological because essentially he's saying that all human beings are fallen and therefore you shouldn't make idols of them. That would make us unique, of course, in the Western world in not having statues if we did get rid of all our statues.

And obviously we were not going to. It's not going to happen. But as an argument, it was kind of bracing. We are now here, probably the last statue of this bit of the podcast, do you think? And this is Edith Cavell. So this is the nurse who was shot at dawn on October the 12th, 1915, by the Germans. She had been helping Allied servicemen trapped behind the enemy lines in the western front to escape

she was shot um i think for as a traitor as an air she'd been a nurse a red cross nurse and she had sort of dishonored her calling in the germans eyes by working with the allies there was a huge international scandal the americans begged her not to do it. There's all kinds of state memorials in Britain. And what I also like, I mean, it's a very sort of progressive memorial in a way, because you've got this statue of her looking like a sort of Mary Poppins-ish figure, and words like humanity and sacrifice. Call the midwife vibe. Right, call the midwife, actually. But then you have the utter contradiction of the two inscriptions. So at the bottom it says, her famous quote, which she says before she dies,

patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone. And then at the top, Tom? For king and country. Patriotism is not enough. Yeah. So the two are slightly at odds with each other, aren't they? Maybe that's the solution with statues, is to put two totally conflicting messages.

Yeah, maybe. Which in a way is, you know, it's the pairing of Charles I and Cromwell again. Yes, I suppose so. Maybe you have to accept that no one statue is sufficient to embody an entire message, that it can only exist in tension with something else. Statues always have multiple meanings, don't they? I mean, they can have... So there's statues in Napier and Havelock,

I mean, you could see them as memorials of what Britain did wrong, if they were that way inclined, couldn't you? You could see them as emblems of sin. You don't have to see them as emblems of sainthood. I mean, obviously, Edith Cavell, she's a saint here, right? And she's the only person, I think, in this...

apart from possibly Charles I, although only subsequently after his death, but she's the only person who's here because she's a martyr, a victim. The others are people who, you know, generally killed other people, whereas she's here because she was shot. So, dare I say, this is quite a Christian statue. It is. And I think that when we go on to do our second episode, when we will go down White Hill, get to Parliament Square,

of course, on Parliament Square, you also have Westminster Abbey, and Westminster Abbey has ten statues to martyrs there, which, again, kind of provides a, maybe a counterpoint to the braggadocio of the statues that you get there. Okay, well, that's a good

note on which to end, I think. I don't think we've... We're not going to cancel Edith Cavell, are we? No, we're not going to cancel her. I think, do we agree with cancel George Washington? No, I think we agree to spare him. Well, I think if they decide to cancel him in America, I think we should. I think that would...

No, I think... Oh, you think hold out against Americanization? It'd be good for tourism, actually. Wouldn't all the George Washington fans would come over here over here anyway on that note i mean on that incredibly powerful insightful note um i think we should um call it a day and we will return in our next podcast with more um statues yeah more statue mongering goodbye bye you thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early access ad-free listening