Summer holiday reading
FALLEN IDOLS
by Alex von Tunzelmann (Headline, R355)
If you are famous, please advise your supporters not to erect a statue of you when you are gone. It would be much better to have your profile on a postage stamp; the worst that people can do is stick it on the envelope upside down.
This book looks at 12 of the most prominent examples of statues erected by previous generations to their heroes who are judged by the changed social and political preferences of our age rather than theirs.
As Von Tunzelmann points out, this is not a new phenomenon. In New Delhi, there is even a statue graveyard for discarded notables of the past: heroes turned villains.
