“William Blake is the only English poet whose central theme is the confrontation between science and imagination.”

Kathleen Raine

The sculpture on the right is by Eduardo Paolozzi and is based on William Blake’s painting Newton. The sculpture resides in the forecourt of the British Library at St Pancras and is quite controversial. Some people see Blake as the arch critic of Newton with his mathematisation of the material world; whereas to others, Paolozzi’s sculpture seemed to celebrate the material world with a mechanical Newton held together with rivets. Paolozzi himself maintained that the sculpture brought together “an exciting union of two British geniuses.”