A London park under the threat of eclipse

IT'S nearly eight years since Athena first wrote about the proposal to construct a Holocaust Memorial and learning centre in the shadow of the Houses of Parliament in Victoria Gardens (November 1, 2017).

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At the time, she observed that-setting aside the aesthetic qualities of the design-the physical scale of the memorial threatened to overwhelm this small and intensively used park. Also, that the memorial duplicated others, including the Holocaust Memorial in Hyde Park, and competed in purpose with the permanent exhibition on this heart-rending theme in the Holocaust Galleries a short walk away across the river in the Imperial War Museum. Indeed, but for the highly emotive subject, it's hard to imagine circumstances in which any one of these considerations in isolation would not constitute a reasonable ground for objection to the project. Nevertheless, the proposals, which have consistently enjoyed government support, were rammed through the planning system in the face of overwhelming local opposition. The project, it should be added, also d