In 1998, the Commons Speaker's Advisory Committee on Works of Art (chaired by Tony Banks, who saw it as a matter of history) commissioned this marble statue for the lobby, to stand alongside Atlee et al.

At that time, statues of living politicians weren't allowed in the Commons (a rule relaxed by Blair), so it bided its time in the Guildhall Gallery, waiting for its subject to croak.

These days, you get searched going into the Guildhall Gallery. But in the summer of 2002 you could easily enter with a Slazenger V600 cricket bat in your trousers, as long as you could do a good theatrical limp. Paul Kelleher, a theatre producer from Isleworth did just that, and hacked at the statue's neck with the bat, trying to smash its head off. The marble held fast, so he grabbed a metal rope support stanchion and gave her a successful Charles I haircut.