Blots on the cityscape

As the 414 bus swings left from the Edgware Road at Marble Arch you avert your eyes, hoping you won’t have to look at the thing looming up in front of you for a single second longer than you have to. Even so, you know it’s there — a blot on the sky, a gulp of polluted air. I’m talking about a 33-ft-high bronze sculpture in the form of a decapitated horse, muzzle pointed downwards, in the middle of Marble Arch. The epitome of ghastly good taste, it looks like an expensive knick-knack from Harrods blown up to a size that would have appealed to Saddam Hussein.

When the thing arrived, the Evening Standard assured us that it would be on view for only one month. But in October 2010 it was joined by a ‘family’ of five plastic jelly babies, the smallest of which is over 7.5ft tall. At the beginning of this year another eyesore appeared in Park Lane on the grass divide opposite the Dorchester.