Yesterday, I was walking down Cockspur Street and noticed the astonishingly elaborate metalwork decoration above one of the doors of the Brazilian Embassy. It was done by Ernest Gillick, an ARA who did much 1920’s commemorative sculpture, including a medal for the Royal Academy Schools. The building, designed by Arthur Bolton in 1906, had been taken over by P&O from the Hamburg America Line in 1918 as reparation for the first world war. P&O then commissioned Gillick to do grand statues of Britain and the Orient – Britain as a Roman centurion with a putto holding a trident on the right, the Orient as a Nubian slave – and the company motto QUIS SEPARABIT in between:-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
I worked in Cockspur Street for 18 months at the DCMS and , to my shame, never noticed these. It’s yet another example of how wonderful your book is going to be when it is published. Thank you.