By Angela Lovely
One of my colleagues at Fitzrovia News has questioned whether sexual abuse may be carved into the very structure of the BBC. Quite literally.
Above the front door to Broadcasting House on Portland Place is a sculpture by Eric Gill. It depicts Prospero and Ariel from Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Eric Gill (1882-1940) was a well known sculptor and produced many works including The Creation of Adam in the Palais des Nations, the European HQ of the United Nations in Geneva.
In 1989 biographer Fiona MacCarthy revealed that Gill had sexual relations with his teenage daughters, his sister and his dog.
Fitzrovia News contributor Fiona Green writes to ask:
While the Press are investigating Jimmy Savile’s abuses, I find it ironic and not a little strange that no-one has pointed out that the sculpture over the BBC in Portland Place is by Eric Gill: paedophile. Is that because it is so Institutionalised?
And as one BBC News report considered: Can the art of a paedophile be celebrated?
What is a Paedophile: The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines the word as: “sexual love directed towards children”. Paedophiles come from virtually all social, income, racial, ethnic and age groups.
I don’t think to call him a paedophile is correct, in the context of the 20s and 30s. EG was a brilliant artist of that there is no dought
Parts of his private life were not; people’s views were very different then.
Today he would have been treated very differently, and quite rightly so.
John.
That’s quite an apology for paedophilia, John…You give a dictionary definition of paedophile, which accurately describes Eric Gill (engaged in ‘sexual love directed at children’…his children…)…and yet he’s not a paedophile because ‘people’s views were very different then’.
How different? In what way?
Was it normal then to shaft your children?
Your post is very ambiguous…what are you trying to say?
Talk of “advertising” what goes on these premises!?
No peadophilia is right, at any time.