Learning from statues

sir – With regards to the pulling down of the statue of Edward Colston (report, June 8), some wise words from Éamon de Valera, the former prime minister and president of the Republic of Ireland, should be remembered.

Asked by a German journalist why they were sitting in a room in Dublin Castle surrounded by the portraits of viceroys who “oversaw Ireland’s oppression”, he replied that they were part of the long history of Ireland and should not be forgotten.

Robin Mathew QC Little Barrington, Oxfordshire

sir – As a Jew, I know exactly how I would feel if I had to walk past a statue of a former concentration camp commander every day and see him described as “a wise and virtuous man”. The scandal is not that Edward Colston’s statue has been toppled, but that it has been allowed to remain standing in the 21st century.

Alan Hunt Edgware, Middlesex

sir – Will statues of anyone connected with slavery be removed? If so, will all statues of Romans disappear? They were slave owners par excellence.

AL Marsh Farnham, Surrey

sir – Many of the historic 18th and early 19th-century houses in London, Bristol and Liverpool were built on the profits of the slave trade.

Given the surge of disgust and demonstrations, shouldn’t statues commemorating the “great and good” involved simply have prominent plaques providing the history of the brutal context of their existence? William Blake

Clun, Shropshire

sir – Fenella Ignatiev (Letters, June 9) is right: throwing away controversial statues is no way to learn from history.

Perhaps, when toppled, they should be kept in a museum of shame or, like Moscow’s park of the fallen heroes, a sculpture park where they can be recontextualised for us better to understand changing perceptions of those once thought of as heroes. Peter Saunders

Salisbury, Wiltshire