English: Back (North side) of Brabazon memorial, Lancaster Gate, London W2, labelled ‘South’ to indicate viewer is looking Southward to the Lancaster Gate of Kensington Gardens (just out of shot, right). The memorial is carved out of Portland limestone and is succumbing slowly to chemical weathering by acid rain. This is particularly evident in the figure of the young boy seated at ease on the summit, and, more unfortunately for historians of British imperialism, in the shallowly-incised inscriptions on the memorial, which are gradually becoming illegible. The (now rather faint) inscription on the face shown in this image reads “To him [Earl Brabazon] the British Empire was a goodly heritage to be fashioned like unto a city of God”, demonstrating Brabazon’s belief (now demonstrated by post-colonial scholarship to be ill-founded ) in the divinely-inspired - perhaps even divine - nature of the British Empire as a sort of New Jerusalem. Seen from this angle, the figure of the boy is (presumably unintentionally) comic in that he is effectively ‘mooning’ the residents of Lancaster Gate and the clergy and congregation of the former Christ Church (which now forms the core of the residential development Spire House).