Friday 4 March 2016

Take a seat between two great men!



There is a short stretch of New Bond Street, in London’s fashionable West End, that is pedestrianised. (It is very short – just a few yards between the junctions with Clifford Street and Grafton Street). There is a bike rack here, a couple of trees, and a bench on which to rest your weary limbs as you pause during your upmarket shopping spree between Watches of Switzerland and Aspreys.

But wait – there’s not much room here! The bench is already occupied by two familiar looking gentlemen! There is just room to squeeze between them, and many tourists do exactly that to have their photos taken between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, who are the gentlemen in question.

This imaginative piece of street sculpture, called “The Allies” was created by an American sculptor, Lawrence Holofcener, and placed here by the Bond Street Association in May 1995 to commemorate fifty years of peace since the end of World War II.

Some people might object that the allies should have included Joseph Stalin, given that the Soviet Union’s sacrifices were greater than those of any other nation during the war, and that the three allies famously sat together at the Yalta conference in February 1945, but Joe Stalin taking a rest in New Bond Street? That would have been more than a bit incongruous, given Stalin’s record and the fact that this area is oozing with conspicuous capitalism, which the Communist leader would hardly have found to his liking.

As it is, a smiling Roosevelt sits in a relaxed pose and Churchill, cigar in hand, leans towards him as if trying to catch the President’s latest quip. Stalin would have been a complete party-pooper, apart from taking up room that a star-struck tourist would probably like to occupy!


©John Welford

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