The Guardians

A statue of Dante Alighieri, brooding over the Piazza di Santa Croce in Florence. In The Lord of the Rings, there are two huge statues of Isildur and Anarion at the Argonath, marking the boundary of Gondor. Each figure holds an axe in the right hand, the left held out as in a gesture of defiance to the scimitar-waving enemy.

i would like to petition Gordon Brown to build similar statues in our fair land, as a warning to England’s enemies. Instead of Isildur and Anarion, who, after all, are characters from a book (albeit a very English book), i would suggest a series of great men, men of dour expression and heavy hand, men like Dante, Milton, Blake, Kierkegaard, Henry James, TS Eliot - killers and ruffians, great poets and novelists and thinkers, the light of the West.