This is the full version of a letter of which a small extract appears in M.C.'s column at the Times Literary Supplement November 15 2024. A sketch of the proposed effigy was published in the TLS on November 8 2024.
Dear Editor
Sylvia Townsend Warner’s life and work are parts of living cultures: her books are readily available in print (I read that much credit is due to Professor Peter Swaab); they are enjoyed, discussed, and written about. Her biography gets attention and is complex, interesting, and open to many interpretations. What more can one ask for?
It seems that £13 000 has already been raised towards the £85 000 cost of placing a polite effigy of her on a park bench in Dorchester (M.C 8 November). If this unimaginative private project is completed, it will diminish her life and work.
Most new “public art” is doomed to scorn and neglect, usually deserved; apart from the obvious case of Banksy, it is strangled at birth by committee think. The only good effigies around are those burnt on Bonfire Nights.
Trevor Pateman
