Topple the mighty

Leon Kuhn and Colin Gill, Friction Books, 216 pages, paperback, £6.99

Several hundred yards apart in London's Westminster stand statues of King Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, key figures in one of the many great social upheavals in British history.

Leon Kuhn and Colin Gill take us on a whistlestop tour of these and other statues in their irreverent and uncompromisingly partisan view of the 'great' men and women who watch over us from their plinths across the capital.

Each statue is accompanied by an often vicious parody drawn by political cartoonist Kuhn while Gill puts each figure in their historical context and outlines the often grotesque means by which they achieved their fame.

The book is also a history of iconoclastic movements in British history from the Reformation to the recent May Day protests. It includes the remarkable 60-year story of Lenin's bust - its repeating cycle of celebration, desecration, abandonment and rediscovery reflecting the ebb and flow of international and domestic politics.