Yesterday, in Ely Cathedral, I took this photograph. In the exquisite Lady Chapel, all the heads had been knocked off the sculptures in the niches. I visited the Fragrant Buddha Temple in the Summer Palace in Beijing with the empathetic artist Qu Leilei. Behind it, are carvings of Buddhas likewise set in niches. As in Ely they had all been DECAPITATED.
In Ely, the damage was inflicted during the Protestant Reformation and, in China, it happened in 1966- 1967 during the Cultural Reformation. That is why I don’t like the idea of British or Western exceptionalism. Human nature is similar everywhere and ideas spread from East to West and West to East and have done throughout human history. That is why I admire Christopher Brown, the Director of the Ashmolean on whose watch the collections were reworked as Crossing Cultures Crossing Time. It is why my novels connect China and the USA, India and the UK and he UK and Kenya. They tell stories of what happens WHEN WE CONNECT!
