Monument to John Knox

This statue was apparently built not to swipe at the newly arriving Catholics (a sort of statement about who really runs things) but to comment on the gentrification of the protestant churches. It is huge, spectacular and turns up as a gateway to the other world in Grey’s Lanark, a book that is increasingly looking like Scotland’s top literary turn of the twentieth century.
This scale of statue is rare enough, especially from a tradition that has an iconoclastic edge. I wonder whether Knox himself would appreciate what feels rather like a form of idolatry.

I have climbed up to the Glasgow Necropolis many times and have never tired of it. The view is simply stunning; although you are staring the city straight in the face you feel like you are miles away due to the quietness the height of the hill provides.
The most impressive grave in the Necropolis in that of John Knox, the leader of the Protestant Reformation. Built in 1825, the Doric column was designed by Thomas Hamilton and the statue itself by William Warren. Its tip is the second highest point in Glasgow after Queen’s Park flagpole.
I like to stand underneath the monument, gaze up to its dizzy heights and think about the all the Glaswegians who, for the past nearly 200 years have done the same thing.