The Aldeburgh Scallop

EADT “Reader’s Choice” winner, The New Angle Prize for Literature 2011

“Scallop is at once a monument to a great musician-composer and a celebration of the origins of his art… A robust and poetic work of art (that) stands at the thrilling edge where culture meets nature” – Mel Gooding

Much has been said and written about Maggi Hambling’s Scallop on Aldeburgh beach. Here is the artist’s own story, told as it happened, with interpolations by some of those who supported (and some who didn’t) her exhilarating and provocative sculpture to Benjamin Britten, one of Britain’s most exalted composers.

Maggi Hambling traces her love of the sea back to earliest childhood and records how this lifelong passion has fired her work, culminating in the construction of a 15ft high, six-and-a-half ton stainless steel sculpture rising out of the shingle on Aldeburgh beach. Children love it. Lovers love it. Those paying tribute to lost loved ones gather around it. And there are those who would wish it melted down or carted away. The artist, and those nearest the action, tell the fascinating story of its conception, official acceptance and construction, and the unholy row that erupted after it was finally unveiled.