Mark Robla News Today

From Cumbernauld to Guildford, we celebrate more unheralded but revelatory areas

Last modified on Tue 2 Mar 2021 12.47 EST Plans to use £100,000 of taxpayers’ money to underwrite an unveiling ceremony for a statue of Margaret Thatcher in her home town have been scrapped. Councillors in Grantham, Lincolnshire were heavily criticised when they voted in December to set aside £100,000 to cover the costs of an event to reveal the statue, hoping donations would recoup the money. The decision reignited divisions in the town over the statue and Thatcher’s legacy, an...

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A model of Margaret Thatcher's head on a spike has appeared atop a plinth destined for a controversial 20ft statue of the Iron Lady

A statue of Thatcher in the Guildhall was vandalised in 2002 (Image: GETTY) In 2002 a different statue of the former Prime Minister was decapitated by a protestor at London’s Guildhall. The attacker used a cricket bat and metal bar to damage the monument. Describing how he erected his model in Grantham, Mr Robla said: “There was no breaking and entering. It has a metal fence around it so Ive just gone in with my ladder and put it up in about five minutes. “I had my high vis jacket on and ...

Philip Guston, a new book about her father’s life and work, Musa Mayer reflects on the controversial postponement of a major Guston retrospective at four museums. She maintains the institutions pushed back the show out of fear, and that it was a mistake. The “paintings are essentially about white culpability—the culpability of all of us, including himself,” Mayer says. “That is why he referred to some of them as self-portraits. He wasn’t just pointing the finger at others, he was p...