The environs of the great offices of State, though not yet the Department for Education, have a fair quota of statues. Many of those, certainly on the main thoroughfare of Whitehall itself near the Cenotaph, are of military men. (I observe, with some ambivalence, that a fair number of these - Montgomery of Alamein, Alanbrooke, 'master of strategy' - are of my own Ulster stock as we are a frontier people, schooled in belligerence.)
This past year, coinciding with the anniversary of the end of the Second World War, saw the erection of several new statues - one, for instance, commemorates the Battle of Britain; another the contribution to victory of the women of Britain. These strike a more resonant note than those to individual generals or air marshals, not least because the Second World War was 'a people's war' - fought, suffered and won collectively.
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