Why are statues seen as symbols of oppression and how might a historical perspective help us understand debates surrounding public memorials? These and a wide range of other issues are the focus of this podcast. Mark Rothery and Paul Jackson discuss the topic with a leading expert in this area, Professor Astrid Swenson of Bath Spa University: https://www.bathspa.ac.uk/our-people/astrid-swenson/. The immediate context for this is the toppling of the Edward Colston Statue in Bristol as part of the Black Lives Matter movement and ongoing debates around the Cecil Rhodes statue in Oxford, street names in London and so on. But contested and problematic histories and debates aimed at dealing with those histories date back as far as the Roman period (no doubt even further) and occur regularly throughout history.