Ivor Novello

There's a new statue in Cardiff of Ivor Novello. About time many people would say. Especially many people of a certain age, that age being over fifty or more likely, over sixty.
I wrote a short booklet about Ivor Novello some ten years ago - "A Portrait of Ivor Novello"; published it myself (which is easy) but could not distribute it easily (distribution is the big problem with publishing yourself and with paying someone to publish it - called Vanity Publishing; they do the job, don't do much distributing and you are left with remaindered copies). I sold about fifty copies over the years mostly to a bookseller in Eastbourne - no ides why he was more interested than anyone else.
Novello was born in Cardiff in a street opposite St David's Hospital; there is a small plaque on the wall next to the front door and that is all the official recognition he had until now.
When writing the booklet, I asked various young people if they knew who he was. Few did; most who had heard the name had heard it in connection with The Ivor Novello Awards. No one knew he was a popular film and stage actor or that he wrote successful plays and very successful musicals or that he wrote one of the most famous of all WW1 songs, "Keep the Home Fires Burning". But why should they know those things? The musicals are never done now - excerpts only and those rarely (e.g. "Friday Night is Music Night") - the plays are dead and never to be resurrected.
But it is good to see a quite magnificent bronze statue of the man, sitting in a chair in a casual way, on a column which has on its four sides some of the titles to his musicals and to some of his most famous songs. Good to see that at last Cardiff has recognised an immensely talented man who was once the toast of London society.