You could say I grew up under the shadow of Margaret Thatcher. Raised in Grantham, Lincolnshire, I went to Thatcher’s former primary school, a mix of brick and portable buildings that by the 1990s were a fitting symbol of a decade of her underfunding. I went on to attend her old secondary school, both of us moving from near the street where her father once ran a grocery shop to the opportunity of the leafy state grammar. For seven years, I ate my lunch in the dining hall named after her – and only choked on my sandwich once.
Until this month, though, Grantham noticeably had no monument to Thatcher. You could walk through the town centre and see more charity shops than references to an ex-PM. In contrast, Sir Isaac Newton, who went to school in Grantham, has long been immortalised in brass, and even had the local shopping centre named after him – and no, it doesn’t just sell apples. The storm that has emerged since Thatcher’s long-delayed statue was erected last week is a clear lesson as to why. Within two hours of its installation, a man was seen egging it. The £300,000 statue, made by the sculptor Douglas Jennings, had already been rejected by Westminster council in 2018 to stand next to parliament.
