LONDON MONUMENT – EVENTS IN 2008

5 June 2008 - The 2008 Battle of Britain Thanksgiving Service in Westminster Abbey will take place on Sunday 21st September. Attendance is by ticket only, for details on how to apply click here

 

3 May 2008 - A plaque commemorating Wing Commander RR Stanford-Tuck is unveiled in Sandwich, Kent. For the full story and photographs click here.

 

16 April 2008 - Flying Officer (later Wing Commander) Patrick PC 'Paddy' Barthropp DFC AFC passes away. A memorable character, he flew with 602 Squadron during the Battle, see below for a true story that he submitted to this site only last month. He will be greatly missed. To see his obituary in the Daily Telegraph click here and his obituary in the Times click here.

 

16 April 2008 - Flight Lieutenant John Browning Holderness has been killed in road traffic accident in South Africa aged 96. A native of Southern Rhodesia (the present-day Zimbabwe) he flew with 1, 229 and 248 Squadrons during the Battle.

 

8 April 2008 - Pilot Officer Hugh Glen Niven passes away. He flew with 602 Squadron during the Battle and, although having lived in Scotland since 1937, was of Canadian nationality and appears on the Monument under that country.

 

31 March 2008 - Pilot Officer Thomas Russell Thomson OBE passes away. He flew with 615, 607 and 213 Squadrons during the Battle.

 

9 March 2008 - Flight Lieutenant Anthony R F Thompson DFC passes away. He flew with 85 and 249 Squadrons during the Battle and was a Captain with BOAC then BA till 1975.

 

5 March 2008 - 'Absolutely Barking' - A true story by Wing Commander PPC ‘Paddy’ Barthropp DFC, AFC covering the wartime exploits of his dog, Mr Jackson, who spent the Battle of Britain on a Fighter Command airfield.

 

3 February 2008 - Squadron Leader Cyril 'Bam' Bamberger passes away. 'Bam' Bamberger and his wife Heather were immensely helpful in the PR events staged as part of the fundraising for the Monument. To see his obituary in the Times click here

 

1 March 2008 - Pilot Officer Thomas B A Sherrington passes away. He flew with 92 Squadron during the Battle.

 

30 January 2008 - latest news regarding the redevelopment of Bentley Priory - click here

 

27 January 2008 - a new Airman's story - P/O R A Marchand - click here

 

15 January 2008 - Squadron Leader Kenneth 'Hawkeye' Lee passes away. To see his obituary in the Daily Telegraph click here

 

12 January 2008 - The fortnightly satirical magazine 'Private Eye' is always alert for wrongdoing or hypocrisy in all aspects of British life including government, the press and agriculture. Its coverage of the architectural world culminates in an annual spoof award "The Sir Hugh Casson Award for The Worst New Building".

The Monument receives a drubbing in the award's review of 2007 by the magazine's architectural guru 'Piloti' (widely believed to be the writer and presenter Gavin Stamp). It contradicts the (so far) unanimously positive impressions fed to this site by visitors to the Monument but is none the less a valid view and can take its place in the gallery of comment generated by the Monument -

"Although our superstar architects have done their best to produce architecture conspicuous for its arrogance, pretentiousness, bad manners and plain stupidity, in the search for the worst new building completed in 2007 no one edifice stands out as a monstrous offence against reason or taste.

However, it is not just architecture that can mar the urban environment - public monuments can achieve the same effect and increasingly are. Hence this year's Hugh Casson Medal is awarded to a work of "sculpture".

That public sculpture should be a growth industry is curious. As the nation diminishes in importance and descends further into fatuity, so the demand increases for memorials and monuments that celebrate our finest hours. This national wallowing in past triumphs is pretty pathetic. And in view of our rulers' enthusiasm for military adventures, perhaps it is disturbing that so many of the new monuments are associated with wars.

This would matter less if the new memorials and statues were any good. But they are not. They are embarrassing. The Animals at War memorial in the middle of Park Lane, for example, is astonishing in its vulgar sentimentality. Then there is the Women of World War II monument in Whitehall (the Casson winner for 2005), so coarse in concept and execution, which dares to challenge the Cenotaph.

Then there are the statues. Mercifully, Westminster council and English Heritage opposed the lobby who wanted to put Ian Walters' childish statue of Nelson Mandela in a floral shirt in Trafalgar Square, so it stands in Parliament Square instead. And now it has been joined by a statue of David Lloyd George, lurching with arm outstretched and his cape blowing in the wind. Oddly enough the sculptor was Professor Glynn Williams of the Royal College of Art who, two years ago, dared to criticise the late Ian Walters' figure of Mandela as "run-of-the-mill mediocre modelling".

In fact, both statues are embarrassingly bad, and it is instructive to compare the Lloyd George statue with the one of the former prime minister in the lobby of the House of Commons by Uli Nimptsch, installed in 1963, to see how much the art of sculpture has declined in the last few decades. One problem is that today sculptors and patrons seem to think statues should be naturalistic, like Madame Tussauds waxworks in bronze. But a great statue is so much more than that: a figure monumentalised and made symbolic.

But there is worse. Take the Battle of Britain Memorial on the Victoria Embankment, unveiled two years ago. This has animated relief friezes depicting the dramatic events of the summer of 1940. Now there is nothing necessarily wrong with figurative sculpture on a memorial. On the magnificent Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Comer, Charles Sergeant Jagger depicted the actions and sufferings of soldiers without sentimentality in an expressive style based on study of the past. But the inspiration for the sensationalist friezes on the Embankment was not the art of ancient Egypt or Greece but the modem cartoon strip. What has been unleashed on us is "Paddy Payne: Fighter Pilot" from the old Lion comic.

The sculptor was Paul Day, who seems to be doing very well, for it was he who was chosen by London & Continental Railways to model an "iconic" sculpture to enhance the restored St Pancras train shed as the new Eurostar terminal.

Standing below the giant clock to stun and repel passengers is a 30ft bronze of an embracing couple. This, called The Meeting Place, is of the waxwork-realist school, with every detail of clothing (including high heels) accurately depicted four times life size. Mr Day has modestly stated of the pair that: "I wanted them to be outside of race and outside of time." Some hope: all art is of its time while so vulgar a conception is instantly dated. As for symbolism, the vaguely Caucasian faces of the couple are as animated and passionate as participants in a pornographic film. The superb restoration and adaptation of W.H. Barlow's train shed is marred by the gratuitous inclusion of this tasteless creation.

And I am horrified to learn that more is to come: a bronze plinth with a 12 metre frieze of encounters inspired by the film Love, Actually is still promised. Even before it appears, this repellent effort at public art surely deserves the Sir Hugh Casson Medal for 2007"

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