‘We are living in a statue boom time’, says Juliet Rix award-winning writer, editor, broadcaster and author of London’s Statues of Women. Before 2021 only one in six of London’s statues commemorating individuals was for a woman. Then in 2022-23 more statues of women were unveiled in the capital than men.

Recent years have seen new figures of Virginia Woolf, Mary Wollstonecraft, Ada Lovelace (computer pioneer and mathematician), Sister Nivedita aka Margaret Noble (an Irish priest’s daughter turned Hindu heroine of Indian nationalism) and suffragist Millicent Fawcett, the first statue of a woman in Parliament Square.

Rix’s style is easy-going and conversational. In her glossy, compact book in the series London Guides from Left Field, Rix sheds light on these statues which herald a shift in the gender balance of statues in the capital.

She takes a comprehensive look at hundreds of statues from early British heroines like St Ethelburga and Boadicea to familiar contemporary figures such as Diana, Princess of Wales and Amy Winehouse.

Queens, of course, have their place with statues of Queen Alexandra, Queen Anne, Queen Charlotte, Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and, not least, Queen Victoria of whom there are more statues in London, in the whole country for that matter, than any other person. Until almost the end of the nineteenth century, the only real women to have statues in the capital were Queens. Rix says ‘Clearly, they were not there entirely on personal merit, but don’t write them off – some of them were extraordinary women thrust to the fore in a man’s world.’

Sculptors have their spotlight in London’s Statues of Women. There are original interviews with Mary Millner, Maggi Hambling and Gillian Wearing along with comments from Mark Quinn, Henry Moore and others.

Mary Millner, responsible for the stunning bronze of Ada Lovelace sited at Millbank, opens the book with its first sculptor interview. With her husband Etienne, she based the statue on a portrait painted in oils by Margaret Sarah Carpenter that currently hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, on loan from the Government Collections since 2023. Lovelace was born Ada Byron in 1816, the only legitimate child of the Romantic poet Lord Byron. She never knew her ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’ father. Her fame and recognition came as a formidable mathematician, credited (incorrectly) as the first computer programmer. Millner describes how she decided to use two rows of bronze punch cards with the statue to signify Lovelace’s outstanding contribution to maths and science. ‘It’s a shame this statue is so high up; it deserves to be noticed,’ says Rix.

An interview with Maggi Hambling sheds light on the sculptor’s thoughts behind her statue of Mary Wollstonecraft, best known for the political treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and as mother to Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein (1818). Hambling says the statue is ‘of an idea . . . an everywoman’. The diminutive silver statue of a naked woman rising from a large volcanic mass upon a plinth was met with some bemusement by those who expected a likeness of Wollstonecraft. With sagacity Hambling says ‘Some people like my work, some hate it. I can’t help that. I make it, it goes out into the world…Paintings are safely on a wall in a gallery. You can choose to look at them or not, whereas public sculpture confronts you – it inhabits your space.’

London’s Fourth Plinth commissions in Trafalgar Square go some way in aiding the increase of statues of women in London. As part of the Mayor of London’s rolling programme to bring contemporary sculpture to this iconic location, its temporary displays have so far boasted four depictions of women and several female contributors.

Mark Quinn’s statue Alison Lapper Pregnant, on the Fourth Plinth in 2005, was pioneering in presenting difference in the public arena. Quinn’s statue was a tribute to disability, motherhood and heroines. Alison Lapper – a disabled woman with congenital phocomelia born with no arms and short legs – was pregnant at the time.

Lapper was a heroine in many ways, not least her courage in the face of mixed reaction, which she describes as ‘awful’. Quinn hopes that with changing attitudes over the past twenty years, the statue will one day find a permanent platform.

Rix’s book is not just an encyclopaedia for researchers and academics; it is a bonus for art lovers and tourists. With dozens of additional statues of women, it covers The Women of World War II, a Chronology of Statues of Women of Colour and sections on Drinking Fountain Females, Britannia, Justice and Henry Moore’s London Women.

In addition, there are three handy ‘Statue Safaris’ in areas of the capital where clusters of statues are placed: Westminster, Bloomsbury and Covent Garden, and the City. ‘Sitings are guaranteed!’ says Rix.

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