Battle of Britain Day - 80 Years on

September 15th is Battle of Britain Day, each year it is a commemoration of  the large scale aerial battle that took place over England in 1940.  We don't celebrate it but perhaps we should do something, today is the 80th anniversary and I doubt if it will get a mention in the media.

I've lived all my life in London and I love the place, growing up in the 1950's and 60's we played in the derelict bombsites left by the Blitz, all the adults had lived through the war and recalled their memories, good and bad, we grew up with the war still all around us.  

Anyway this isn't a post about any of that, this is a post about sculpture. At the Victoria Embankment on the River Thames there is a memorial to commemorate all the people, military and civilian who took part in the Battle, and I think it's a stunning piece of work.  So what's this got to do with toy soldiers?  Well for me toy soldiers are very much about sculpting, and as I get older I see them increasingly as pieces of art, I appreciate their design and the technology that made them, but enough of this claptrap because I also still play with them.

So for those who may never get to see the real thing here are the pictures of the Battle of Britain Memorial in London.

The day I found VICTORY in the bottom of a bottle thanks to Yinka Shonibare MBE.

I blinked in the January sunshine, opened my eyes and it was still there.  I could hardly believe it but it seemed such an amazing thing that I felt I must share it with you dear reader (whoever you may be)

Since I no longer work in town I avoid going up into London (because it can be a bit of a nightmare) but a few days ago Mrs C needed to visit Chinatown so I went along as her bagman.  After a pleasant lunch we headed back towards Waterloo Station via Trafalgar Square, the later is of course a tourist destination of International renown with Nelson's Column in the centre surrounded by four podiums.  The thing is that only three of the podiums have statues on them and the fourth stood empty until a few years ago when someone came up with the idea of using it to showcase modern works of art, some of which have been quite controversial.  This particular work has had little or no attention from the media and has nothing to do with collecting toy soldiers, except that it is a model even if it does weigh in at a whopping 4 tons and 15 metres long, so it just had to go in the blog.

I've never heard of Yinka Shonibare but anyone who can make a four ton model of HMS Victory in a bottle has earned their MBE in my book.