News of the Week

Statue of Gagarin will appear in London soon!

A statue is to be erected in London to mark the achievements of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.

It will appear next to Admiralty Arch where Gagarin  met the then Prime Minister Harold MacMillan fifty years ago. It is also very near to a statue that celebrates one of Britain's greatest explorers and circumnavigator of the globe - Captain James Cook.

The 3.5m (12ft) statue is a gift from the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) to the British Council, the organisation which represents the UK culturally abroad.

It shows Gagarin in a very typical mode: he's wearing a spacesuit; his profession is on show. He's also standing on a globe and the trajectory of his orbit is around him.

The representative of the British Council said, said: "We have to remember that he is not just the most celebrated man on Earth when he comes down from space, he is the only famous figure who was actually neither a movie star nor a king or a queen - he was an icon from popular roots."

Yuri Gagarin and British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan

The statue will be formally unveiled in London on 14 July by the cosmonaut's daughter, Elena Gagarina, who is the director of the Kremlin Museums.

The statue is part of a series of cultural events to mark the Gagarin 50th anniversary. These events will include an exhibition at the Council's headquarters on the life of the cosmonaut and the early Soviet space programme.

The BBC will be playing its part by showing the First Orbit  film on 17 big screens around the UK.Shot on the International Space Station and including archive material, the movie tries to recreate what Yuri Gagarin might have seen on his flight around the Earth.

British news on Gagarin's returning to Moscow (1961)

Trailer of   First Orbit   film