{"id":636,"date":"2007-08-30T13:13:16","date_gmt":"2007-08-30T12:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=636"},"modified":"2007-08-30T13:13:16","modified_gmt":"2007-08-30T12:13:16","slug":"nelson-mandela-in-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=636","title":{"rendered":"Nelson Mandela in London"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>South Africa&#8217;s former president Nelson Mandela was in London this week for the unveiling of a new statute of him in Parliament Square. I lost no time in going down to have a look today.<br \/>\n<CENTER><br \/>\n<IMG SRC=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Mandela.jpg\" BORDER=3><BR><font size=\"-2\">Statue of Nelson Mandela <br \/>in London&#8217;s Parliament Square<\/font><br \/>\n<\/CENTER><br \/>\nThe statute is on a much lower plinth than the others in the square which makes it more accessible and the open arms pose makes it more personal. But this is a large and imposing work that stands 9 foot (2.7 metres) high. The work was the idea of Donald Woods, whose story was told in the film &#8220;Cry Freedom&#8221; [my review <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/pfilms.html#Cry%20Freedom\">here<\/a>] and the sculptor was Ian Walters who has since died.<br \/>\nOf course, Nelson Mandela is the most heroic figure of our generation and something of a secular saint. I have read his biography &#8220;Long Walk To Freedom&#8221; [my review <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/biographies.html#LWTF\">here<\/a>] and actually saw him on an earlier visit to London [my blog posting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.co.uk\/nighthawk-static\/permalink.php?id=1244_0_1_0_C\">here<\/a>].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Africa&#8217;s former president Nelson Mandela was in London this week for the unveiling of a new statute of him in Parliament Square. I lost no time in going down to have a look today. Statue of Nelson Mandela in London&#8217;s Parliament Square The statute is on a much lower plinth than the others in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}