Philip Ward-Jackson's Public Sculpture of the City of London[*] is the seventh volume of Public Sculpture of Britain. It does for public sculpture (but not sculpture inside churches or galleries) what Simon Bradley and Nikolaus Pevsner do for the buildings the sculpture is on (or near) in The Buildings of England volume on The City of London. In a way it does more. While buildings have to be interesting in themselves to get into Pevsner, Ward-Jackson can put everything in. The small and anecdotal - the little bronze of Dr Johnson's cat Hodge in Gough Square, for example - is given the same kind of attention as large allegorical figures celebrating power, commerce, fame and sacrifice.

LRB 22 May 2003 | PDF Download