The sculptor Laurence Broderick, who has died aged 88, was known for a single work, although that work was both widely loved and hard to miss. Standing nearly three metres high and weighing seven tonnes, The Guardian, known popularly as The Bull, has stood in Birmingham’s Bullring shopping centre since 2003. In that time, it has become the city’s mascot, a symbol of its bullishness.
Modelled on a Hereford bull, the massive bronze is the favourite subject of camera-toting tourists and a meeting place for local shoppers. From time to time, it is dressed in seasonal costume: when the Rothesay Classic at Edgbaston is taking place, the bull appears in tennis whites; at Christmas, it sports a red nose; when temperatures fall, it is given its own woolly jumper. When, in 2006, vandals scratched their initials into its flank, Brummies were outraged. Broderick was overjoyed by the public response to his creation: “It’s doing really what I wanted it to do. It’s uniting the people of Birmingham.”
