Creative Liberty

Faceless bureaucrats at Cambridge city council have ordered the removal of a sculpture representing the late Duke of Edinburgh as an academic incarnation of the Terrible Trivium. The bronze statue is thirteen feet tall and stands outside an office block, ostensibly in order to commemorate the Duke's role as chancellor of the local university although, as usual in such matters, its function as a power-blaring foghorn of corporate bad taste probably ought not to be underestimated. A firm of property developers commissioned the piece for a hundred and fifty thousand before erecting it without the encumbrance of planning permission; but beyond that nobody seems willing to claim responsibility. The supposed artist, whom His Highness would doubtless have dubbed "that damn dago" or something equally worthy of a university chancellor, said it was "an abuse" that his name had been attributed to the work. The chair of the property developers, who had the aesthetic advantage of intimate acquaintance with the price-tag, said that it was "spectacular," but apparently did not publicly express any particular desire to have it in his own back garden.