90 years since Adam Lindsay Gordon recognised in Westminster Abbey

On 11 May 1934, Adam Lindsay Gordon was accorded the greatest literary honour when His Royal Highness the Duke of York unveiled his bust in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey.

The only Australian to be so honoured, his bust is situated between a bust of Alfred Tennyson and a statue of Scottish poet Thomas Campbell, facing the entrance to the Abbey.

Lindsay Gordon’s bust was sculpted by Lady Hilton Young (Kathleen Scott, widow of the late Captain Robert Scott of Antarctic fame; she married Edward Hilton Young in 1922).

At the unveiling, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang said:

‘It seems fitting that Gordon should have a place in this shrine of British poetry. Whatever a stern criticism may say as to the abiding merit of his work, at least there can be no doubt as the value which the heart of Australia sets upon it. He is the voice of one of the young nations of the British race. Thus, to him, exiled once and now brought home, England gives a place among her own most honoured dead, and the memorial to him here will be an enduring link between Australia and the Motherland.’