Enda Brady: UK correspondent on the planned memorial statue of Queen Elizabeth

The new design for the national memorial for Queen Elizabeth II has been unveiled - set to be built in St James's Park in central London.

Lord Norman Foster's design team has been announced as the winner in the competition for a memorial to honour Britain's longest-reigning monarch.

UK correspondent Enda Brady says a separate statue for the late King Philip will also be built.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Into Brady UK correspondence with US right now hey and.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Da hey Heather, how are you?

Speaker 1 (00:04):
And well thank you? Now's this five percent of GDP
for the military spending reel?

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Yes, it will be in ten years time, that's the problem.
And where will we be in a decade We simply
don't know. So Keir Starmer is heading over to the
Netherlands to the Hague. There is the big two day
summit of all the NATO leaders starting today. What's interesting
is out of nowhere yesterday and this didn't really make
the news because of everything that's going on in the

(00:30):
Middle East. President Zelenski arrived pretty much unannounced into London yesterday.
He went straight to Windsor Castle for lunch with King
Charles and then he came back to number ten Downing Street.
They literally rolled out a red carpet at the front
of number ten Downing Street for Zelensky yesterday. So the
threat from Russia, the war, it has not stopped. The

(00:52):
Russian threat has not gone away. And Starmer's pledge to
NATO today will be that yes, Britain will start spending
five center GDP on defense, but it'll take them a
decade to get there.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Now, What is interesting about it is that it's made
up of three point five percent, which is traditional defense spending,
and then one point five percent, which is whole of society.
What does that mean.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
I think that's investment in infrastructure. And look, given what
we saw the other day with pro Palestinian activists getting
onto an RAF airbase in Oxfordshire and effectively destroying aircraft
tens of millions of dollars worth, they need every penny
they can get because that was very embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Hey, so where's the statue of Queen Elizabeth? Gonna go?

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Saint James's Park just in front of Buckingham Palace, And
basically Lord Norman Foster, the renowned British architect, has been
given the gig. He was one of several entries and
the government and the royal family have chosen him. So
there will be a statue of the Queen on horseback.

(01:59):
There will be a kind of like a see through
bridge over replacing what is a bridge there at the
moment in Saint James's Park, And interestingly they're also going
to have a statue of Prince Philip, so it'll be
a really kind of standout kind of moment. I think,
and the plan is for it all to be done
by April next year, when she would have turned a hundred.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Hey tell me about this island and the Keiwi connection
to the Scottish island.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, this is a lovely story. Today. So there is
an island for sale called Shoona Shuna and it has
a ruined castle on it eleven million dollars if you
fancy it. It is beautiful, but the castle is in
ruins and would you believe In nineteen eleven a Kiwi
adventurer called George Alexander Buckley McLean he built that castle.

(02:49):
It's absolutely stunning the beaches. It looks beautiful, very serene
and peaceful. But I think eleven mil is just a starter.
If you can buy the island, you're gonna probably have
to spend another ten or eleven and doing up that castle.
But a Kiwi adventurer, he was a mate of Shackleton's.
He was on the expedition to the Antarctic on the
Nimrod and he somehow rocked up on a Scottish island

(03:11):
in nineteen eleven and built himself a castle. The family
are selling it. Family are selling it now. Bottom line
is eleven million, end z.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
What do you know about this castle is double glazed, enunsulated.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
It's got trees growing out of the windows. Come on, Heather,
come on, that's the catch. You're going to have to
spend a lot of money doing it up. There was
a family living there up until maybe three or four
decades ago. The kids were home schooled and it's been
in the same family for eighty years. They're now deciding
to sell.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
That's the Galley family, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
This is it? Yeah, yeah, the Gully family and Da've
decided to cash in their chips. But look, someone in
Ireland last week won about four hundred million dollars on
euro millions matching seven balls. So this will be loose
change for someone. And what a project. What a project.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Thanks Inda, appreciate it. Into Brady UK Correspondent.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive. Listen live to
news Talks it'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.