Eric Gill’s crimes were unforgivable, but his statue is blameless

I like to think of myself as a latter-day Mother Shipton. I may not live in a cave in the north of Yorkshire, but I do occasionally dabble in prophecy. And, like Mother Shipton, I am accurate approximately roughly one per cent of the time.

And I can prove it. In a diary piece for the Spectator in June 2020, I wrote the following: ‘Is it really any great leap to suppose that the same activists who would see a statue of Mahatma Gandhi toppled for his ‘problematic’ views might not wish the same fate on Eric Gill’s sculpture of Prospero and Ariel on the facade of the BBC’s Broadcasting House?’ This week, a man fulfilled my prediction by climbing a ladder and attacking Gill’s work with a hammer.

In truth, it didn’t take any great powers of divination to see this one coming.