Tired of London, Tired of Life - A website about things to do in London

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7 March 2011

Find the LSE Penguin

The London School of Economics has been in the news for all the wrong reasons over the past couple of weeks, so it's important to remember that it really is just a university like any other, full of lefty students, silliness and bizarre obsessions.


The LSE penguin is a perfect example. The penguin statue, originally donated by Louis Odette, the philanthropist and former LSE student, with other animal statues, stands on the pavement in Portugal Street, in the heart of the School's campus just off the Aldwych, and the students have embraced it as their unofficial mascot for years now.

However, disaster struck when the statue was stolen in 2009, leading to gifts of flowers, poems, tins of sardines and Penguin biscuits at the site, presumably to encourage the Penguin to return, and an inevitable Facebook campaign to find the missing sculpture.

Eventually, the decision was taken to replace the penguin with a heavier, less steal-able model, which was installed in November 2009, and remains to this day. For more information, click here.

^Picture © RachScottHalls used under Creative Commons^

2 comments:

  1. There are a couple more animal sculptures around the college precinct - if memory serves there's an eagle on the way towards Carey Street. The obsession with matters fauna doesn't stop there. The LSE student paper is called The Beaver.

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  2. Yes, isn't there an little elephant around somewhere too?

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