FALLEN IDOLS

This is a book about how we make history. There are lots of ways we remember the past – in song, in verse, in movies and TV shows, in art, in artefacts, in exhibitions and festivals. We tell our stories in fiction, in nonfiction, in propaganda, in anecdotes, in jokes. This book looks at one particular and controversial form of historical storytelling: statues. Statues are intended, literally, to set the past in stone. As we’ll see, that doesn’t always work.