David Bowie: Should there be a permanent memorial for the rock legend?

Of course, the awkward question then arises as to which Bowie should be commemorated

(Getty)

One day, a memorial for David Bowie might look a little silly, as if the country in the year 2016 had undergone a massive overreaction to the death of a man who, while popular at the time, might from some vantage point on the future, look hopelessly outdated, obscure even. Such is the fate of many a statue.

Indeed, the row over the one of Cecil Rhodes at the University of Oxford proves how radically the climate of opinion can change over the lifespan of a lump of bronze. Every town square in Britain has a statue or two of someone now utterly obscure, even if they were a big player in the Peninsular War or the birth of the industrial revolution.

No matter. They were, in that great journalistic phrase, “right at the time”, and much the same may be said of the late Bowie. By any standard we have at our disposal today, his work has stood the test of time, and there is no necessary reason to believe it will not in the future, and, after all, his first celebrated albums are already four decades old. The past few days have shown how beloved he was of the public, and how globally significant he was too.

Of course, the awkward question then arises as to which Bowie should be commemorated – the glam rock one, the thin white Duke, the pierrot, or the one with bandages around his head. It would, therefore, be fitting for the statue to be chosen by the public, and for it, just like those ones of long forgotten equestrian figured imperial generals, to be paid for “by public subscription”. It should certainly, though, be in Beckenham, which needs the cachet rather more than trendy Brixton in London.