Photo of the Day: Mandela, Liberator, in Parliament Square

I took this photo back in January, on my first trip to London. While I was snapping pictures right and left, I had to make sure that I captured digitally this statue of Nelson Mandela. There were already constant news reports that the former South African leader was seriously ailing (indeed, the wonder is that he lasted until his death Thursday).

I took several other photographs in Parliament Square that late Friday afternoon, including ones posted to this blog about Winston Churchill and Sir Robert Peel. But this nine-foot bronze statue of Mandela by sculptor Ian Walters was special. He is not set as high as the other figures in the square, and in his characteristic floral shirt he looks as if he shares more of the air of the common man than anyone else here. Moreover, unlike the others here (including the lone American, Abraham Lincoln), Mandela was the only figure alive for his statue’s unveiling, having lived long enough to pass from heated controversy to something approaching secular canonization.

Mandela shares one other thing with Lincoln. Both were, in essence, liberators—men responsible, through political guile, persistence, and moral passion, an entire class of human beings from the worst kind of legal shackles and inhumanity. They were, in the truest sense, fathers of their reborn nations.

When the statue was unveiled six years ago, Mandela noted: “Though this statue is of one man, it should in actual fact symbolize all of those who have resisted oppression, especially in my country."

Photo of the Day: Sanctuary of Faith and Civilization

Perhaps the highlight of my short business trip to London in late January was Westminster Abbey. I had gotten there late on a Friday afternoon—not only just beyond the last tour of the day, but also not ideal for taking exterior shots. The next day, with basically only (part) of a morning to take in the city before flying home, I got off a tour bus and decided that I simply had to explore this historic site at greater length. I did so, for an hour, and only wished I had even more time to linger inside.

The Church was founded in 960, and from 1066 on, every British monarch was crowned here. As I looked around at the astonishing statuary inside, I was not unmindful of the turbulent struggle over faith initiated and maintained by those rulers, and how much their subjects (not just those within that island, but also, for the longest time, Ireland and the British Empire beyond) suffered as a result because of the religious, political, and socioeconomic differences bred by this.

But anyone wanting to come to grips with the history of Western Civilization (and, if you live in the West, you should) should come here; look around at the 3,000 statesmen and politicians, lawyers, warriors, clerics, writers, artists and musicians buried or memorialized within these hallowed walls; think of their individual stories; then imagine the arc of progress, created in stops and starts, they collectively formed. It's impossible to tell all their stories here, but I hope to give a strong sense of at least some of them in future posts on this blog. This church--a place that inspires every kind of awe imaginable--deserves no less.

Photo of the Day: An ‘Aye’ for the London ‘Eye’

On my last day of my business trip to London at the end of January, I noticed from a tour bus the striking structure in the photograph. Its official name for the last couple of years, following one of those execrable sponsorship deals, has been the EDF Energy London Eye. But when I showed the photo to a colleague who lives in the area, she immediately referred to it as “The Eye,” and I suspect that most people would use that or the slightly longer “London Eye.”

In any case, when it was built in 1999 (giving rise to yet another name, the Millennium Eye), it was the tallest Ferris wheel in the world. Since then, it’s been surpassed in size by a couple in Asia, but I suspect that natives will continue to regard it as a fine bankside adornment of the Thames, the way that New Yorkers still fondly behold the Chrysler Building years after it was superseded as the world’s tallest building.

Photo of the Day: An Unexpectedly Savage Place

You’d never know, from the bright sunshine of this midwinter day and the trees, not to mention the peeps at contemporary metropolitan London in the background, that the structure in this photo I took from a tour bus several weeks ago once inspired terror. But that’s what the Tower of London used to do--and, truth be told, maybe you get a hint of the dread it inspired from the sight of its parapets.

This is where they lodged enemies of the state, and in the time of King Henry VIII it had more than its share of residents (Thomas More, Anne Boleyn, Thomas Cromwell), once in the favor of the mad monarch, then finding themselves, terrifyingly, on the outside.  One of my posts that had the most hits described how a Jesuit, in perhaps the worst period for Catholics in England, under Queen Elizabeth I, managed to escape from this nearly impregnable prison.

The continuing fascination that people have with this once-savage place (not used to house a prisoner since Hitler deputy Rudolf Hess, astoundingly, landed in the country early in WWII) can best be seen by the fact that a movie called Tower of London, about Richard III (before the revisionists and modern archaeologists got hold of him), was made about it, then remade. Naturally, these were horror movies. (Just what you'd expect, with Boris Karloff and Vincent Price in the casts.)

Photo of the Day: The Last Lion, Facing the Gathering Storm

London, I discovered late last week, in a short tour of the British capital, is a city of varied and multitudinous statuary. Parliament Square—dotted with sculptures of the men who led the government, just across the street—is a particularly striking example, with the likes of Robert Peel, Benjamin Disraeli and David Lloyd-George represented.

But one bronze statue in the northeast corner of the square, above all, was instantly recognizable—so much so that I could easily figure out the likeness from the back, without even a hint of the familiar bulldog expression. There was the naval overcoat, of course, ready not just for that damp London weather but even those occasions when he had to venture overseas to confer with allies in a war of the highest stakes.

The bald head and stocky frame might have led some of the unsuspecting to see elements of a contemporary, the authoritarian Benito Mussolini. But instead of il Duce’s cocky lift of the shoulders there was also that frame, already slightly bent from years in the public eye and the full weight of four decades of his own mistakes and disappointments. And now here he was, with not only the fate of a nation but even that of Western civilization and representative government resting on his shoulders. 

“The Last Lion,” William Manchester called him. There's only one word in the inscription on the base of the sculpture, but we don't even need that for identification. The greatness of Winston Churchill, as man and statesman, lies in the fact that it surmounts all the true faults charged by detractors. He was an arch-imperialist, with little sympathy for the nationalist aspirations of India and Ireland. He did support feckless King Edward VIII in the abdication crisis. He did display an overaggressive streak—a desire to strike anywhere (e.g., as First Lord of the Admiralty in WWI, at Gallipoli; in WWI, in Norway, again at the Admiralty, then, as Prime Minister, in Italy, the “soft underbelly of Europe”) that appalled his military advisers and meant unnecessary loss of lives.

None of that mattered during his nation's darkest hour--but his own finest one. He was right, nearly before everyone else in the West, on the preeminent issue of his time: the rise of a totalitarian state in the middle of Europe that was not only a danger to its own people but to the peace of the world. And when, because of predecessors' errors, Britain and its empire stood alone against this menace, he steeled its spine with oratory still remembered nearly three-quarters of a century later.

All the figure in Parliament Square (created by sculptor Ivor Roberts-Jones, and installed in 1973) has for support is a cane, which Churchill seems prepared to use, nonetheless, to propel him and his country towards their destiny. He might be aging, but he’s not undone—only alone, the way he’s been so often, and while he might not be smiling, his gaze is resolute.

The army might have fled back across the English Channel from the disaster at Dunkirk, leaving Churchill only with words, but what words they are: “We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”