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Arts feature

The uncomfortable lessons of the new Fourth Plinth statues

Alexander Chula on the uncomfortable lessons of the new Fourth Plinth statues

10 September 2022

9:00 AM

10 September 2022

9:00 AM

The Revd John Chilembwe – whose statue will adorn Trafalgar Square from next Wednesday – is notorious for the church service he conducted beneath the severed head of William Jervis Livingstone, a Scottish plantation manager with a reputation for mistreating his workers. The night before, Chilembwe’s followers had broken into his house and chased him from room to room as he tried to fend them off with an unloaded rifle.

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Samson Kambalu’s Fourth Plinth commission, ‘Antelope’, will be unveiled on 14 September. Alexander Chula’s book, Goodbye, Dr Banda, on Malawi and the West, will be published by Polygon in March 2023.

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