A statue of Charles Dickens will be erected this weekend in Portsmouth, UK, in honor of the great writer’s 202nd birthday.
The statue goes up against the author’s wishes, or at least against something he once said when he was alive. The Independent has more: “The Dickens statue, which will be unveiled tomorrow in the Guildhall Square in Portsmouth, the city of the author’s birth, has been especially complicated. Not least because Dickens himself wrote about his funeral: ‘I conjure to my friends on no account to make me the subject of any monument, memorial or testimonial whatsoever.'”
British portrait sculptor Martin Jennings was commissioned to create the statue. His work include bronze renditions of Queen Elizabeth, Sir John Betjeman, and Lord Bingham of Cornhill.