Lion of inquiry: Thandie tweets London Zoo

THANDIE Newton is currently on our screens playing corrupt DCI Roz Huntley in BBC drama Line of Duty, but she is proving to be a force for good in real life. The award-winning actress is taking on London Zoo over a statue that, she suggests, enforces questionable representations of race.

Yesterday, Newton, right, took to Twitter with a photograph of a statue in the Regent’s Park landmark. Depicting an African man in a loincloth bearing a primitive weapon and sparring with a lion, it is not what she was hoping to see on show at a zoo.

“In these times I wonder if this should be in a public space,” she wrote yesterday afternoon. “It saddened me to see. Representation is i mpo r t a n t . Thoughts?” Many of her fans agreed with her. “Not suitable,” one said. “Horrible and aggressive,” added another. The statue was created by Dutch

THE Royal Academy’s chief executive Charles Saumarez Smith decamped from Mayfair last night and settled at the Devonshire Club in Bishopsgate, to launch his new book, East London. Saumarez Smith confessed that much sculptor Henri Teixeira de Mattos, and was gifted to the zoo in 1906.

This is not the first time that Newton, whose mother is from Zimbabwe, has called out such behaviour. Last year she slammed a London branch of Starbucks that used a statue of a black child for display purposes. They quickly apologised and s wi f t ly removed the item.

The complaint is the latest in a long list in recent years. The Rhodes Must Fall movement in O x f o rd h a s lobbied for the removal of all statues of the imperialist politician Cecil Rhodes, and only this week it was announced that Colston Hall in Bristol is to be renamed due to the “toxic” legacy of its slave trader namesake Edward Colston.

The Londoner contacted London Zoo this morning to ask if they had a response to Newton’s concerns, but they are yet to comment.

of his initial research cut some corners. “Several people were kind enough to point out that most of the information came from Wikipedia,” he said with a chuckle. “The internet’s a wonderful thing!”