Sculptor. His father was the broadcaster and journalist Richard Dimbleby (1913–1965) and his older brothers, the broadcasters David and Jonathan Dimbleby. After attending Cranleigh School, Surrey, he went on, from 1968, to study sculpture, initially at Edinburgh College Art and subsequently at Goldsmith’s and Central St Martin’s where he took his degree in Fine Art. Dimbleby began working as an assistant to the abstract sculptor William Pye, but once he had set up independently he returned to figurative sculpture, his first interest. Dimbleby’s chief public sculpture commissions include Elephant Seat, Leamington Spa, installed in Whitehead Court shopping centre, 1988, relocated to Jefferson Gardens, 2008; Captain Cook as a Youth, Great Ayton, Hambleton District, North Yorkshire, 1997; memorial plaque to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, St Marylebone parish church, 2006; portrait statues of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, 2005, Christie Hennessy, Tralee, County Kerry, 2008, Jimmy Hill, Ricoh Arena, Coventry, 2011, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, St Mary’s Churchyard, Ottery St Mary, Devon, 2022; and war memorials at his old school, Cranleigh (‘Leaving’, 2016), and at Aviva headquarters, City of London (‘Absent’, 2018). He also modelled his father’s memorial plaque for Westminster Abbey (dedicated 1990). He died of motor neurone disease on 10 February 2024, and is survived by his wife, Kay, and their four children, Joe, Edmund, Maisie and Grace.
Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 41–44; Nicholas Dimbleby website; Gravy from the Gazebo: ‘A Reflection: Nicholas Dimbleby, Sculptor of the Samuel Taylor Coleridge Memorial Statue’ (17 February 2024); G.T. Noszlopy, Public Sculpture of Warwickshire, Coventry & Solihull, Liverpool, 2003, pp. 99–100; Old Cranleighan Society: ‘Nicholas Dimbleby’ (21 February 2024); The Times (online edn.), ‘Nicholas Dimbleby obituary’ (16 February 2024).
Terry Cavanagh, March 2026
