Following our plinth interlude this autumn there doesn't seem to have been much news about what was happening next in trafalgar square, until we heard Clive James speaking with his Point of View on the radio last night.
He was berating a female journo for revelling in her own ignorance of a certain Sir Keith Park who (we heard) is, in exaggerated fibreglass form, the new temporary fourth plinther prior to being cast in bronze and placed on a permanent plinth of his own.
Needless to say I had never heard of Sir Keith Park either, but felt humbled enough by Clive James' overwhelming support for him to run an internet search.
And could hardly believe what I found. Park does indeed seem to have been a man of heroic proportions both in his body (standing 6ft 5) and in his life.
He was a hugely successful fighter pilot in World War One who went on to lead with exceptional brilliance the fight against the Luftwaffe in World War Two. He seems to have combined the ability to be a first rate pilot with the completely different abilities to plan and lead startlingly effective campaigns. And while I admit that the website I was consulting may have been somewhat (well all right, extremely) biased in his favour, it left the casual reader pretty much certain that without Sir Keith Park it would have been a case of Sprechen sie Deutsch? for this blog.
Strange that for someone who feels they hold basically pacifist views, I should be so very grateful to this man who killed or was directly responsible for killing hundreds (thousands?) of his fellow human beings.
Maybe the War is sufficiently distant now that it's possible to guess what life would be like today if everyone on this side of the English Channel had taken a moral stand and refused to fight.
For me that's not a good picture, so I am now grateful to say I have heard of Sir Keith Park and that I support his right to be be on that plinth for as long as the fibreglass will stand it.
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