The BBC is once again at the centre of criticism – this time for spending more than £500,000 in restoring the vandalised sculpture of Ariel and Prospero from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, that adorns the entrance to its London headquarters Broadcasting House.
The statue was sculpted in 1931 by Eric Gill, rightly described today by both the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian as ‘a paedophile’ who not only sexually abused his two daughters and his sister – but had illicit relations with the family dog as well.
But along with his sexual deviance, Gill was arguably the greatest British sculptor of the 20th century, whose name lives on in the Gill Sans typeface font that he designed in 1928. A fervent Roman Catholic, he is also renowned for sculpting the Stations of the Cross in Westminster Cathedral. His hidden life of incest and bestiality was first revealed by his biographer Fiona MacCarthy in 1989, using Gill’s own diaries in which he confessed to his secret perversions.
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