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Lenin. This phenomenon forms the central theme of
Shelley’s sonnet Ozymandias, which contrasts the
inevitable decline of all leaders and their empires
with the lasting power of art. The name Ozymandias
is a transliteration into Greek of part of the throne
name of Ramessis II,
User-maat-re-Setep-en-re
and
Shelley’s sonnet was inspired by the announcement
in 1817 that Italian circus strongman turned desert
adventurer Giovanni Belzoni had acquired for the
British Museum a colossal statue of Ramessis II
on the base of which is this inscription:
King of Kings am I, Ozymandias. If
anyone should
like to know my grandeur and reach of stature, let
him surpass any of my achievements.
Shelley tweaked this with the magic of iambic
pentameter into the more poetic:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Invisible Statues
The Austrian historian Robert Musil said:
There is
nothing in this world as invisible as a monument.
The truth in this statement is amply demonstrated if
instead of focusing on the controversial fourth plinth
we try and name the men who occupy the other three
plinths in Trafalgar Square. Could you name anyone
other than Nelson who is depicted in the square?
Spookily this cropped up as a question on University
Challenge as I was editing this article. Did you know?
First is General Sir Charles Napier? Who he? A great-
great-grandson of Charles II born at Whitehall Palace
who fought against Napoleon in the Peninsular Wars
that’s who. Later this General of the British Empire
conquered the Sindh Province of what is now
Pakistan and became the Commander-in-Chief of the
British Army in India. Colonial to his very marrow
Napier claimed that
so perverse is mankind that every
nationality prefers to be misgoverned by its own
people than to be well ruled by another
.
His old
house is now the Oaklands Catholic School in
Waterlooville, Hampshire. His Trafalgar Square
statue was
much criticised when it was unveiled.
Napier’s statue was, said The Art Journal,
perhaps
the worst piece of sculpture in England.
Another Trafalgar Square
plinthy
is that ne’er do
well George IV, formerly known as the Prince
Regent. In the 1830s a monument to him had been
built at the old North London village of Battlebridge
at the junction of the Gray’s Inn Road, the Pentonville
Road and what would become the Euston Road.
The monument, sixty feet tall, was topped by an
eleven-foot-high statue of the king that had cost
all of £25. Like the King himself it was instantly
unpopular, described as
a ridiculous octagonal
structure crowned by an absurd statue
. It lasted just
nine years before it was demolished but the name
stuck and Battlebridge became Kings Cross.
On the site was built the Lighthouse Building -
London’s own flat iron building which a hundred
years later is in a rum old state. The ground floor
shops have been boarded up for years - one of them,
at the back facing the Scala Cinema used to be
Branningan’s Jewellers once popular with Londoners
for wedding rings. My parents bought their wedding
ring here in 1950, walking it up to Maida Vale to
show my father’s grandmother. They’ve still got the
ring but sadly not the house in Maida Vale!
In September 2013 actors dressed as statues representing 160 years of Kings Cross for the unveiling of the new Kings Cross Square
