Martin Gayford

Moving statues

Monuments used to come down with much greater regularity than today. The mob of Bologna once even destroyed a Michelangelo masterpiece

issue 09 January 2016

One of the stranger disputes of the past few weeks has concerned a Victorian figure that has occupied a niche in the centre of Oxford for more than a century without, for the most part, attracting any attention at all. Now, of course, the Rhodes Must Fall campaign is demanding that the sculpture — its subject having been posthumously found guilty of racism and imperialism — should be taken down from the façade of Oriel College.

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