Liverpool: St. John's Gardens

At the back end of April, I had to go to Liverpool to have my new passport processed which cost me an arm and a leg.  However, what a pleasant surprise Liverpool was:  a beautiful city centre full of genuinely friendly people.

In particular, I really liked St. John's Gardens (below) in Liverpool city centre:

My favourite statue there?  Well, it had to be the one of the army drummer boy (below), it just reminded me of Thomas Hardy's 'Drummer Hodge' poem about the Boer War. 

Generally prefer Hardy for his fiction rather than his poetry.  Went through a big phase of reading Hardy between my late teens and early 20s, my favourite novels being the great tragedies:  'Tess of the Durbervilles'; 'The Mayor of Casterbridge'; 'Jude The Obscure'; and 'The Return of the Native' (the first Hardy novel I ever read).  Hope to go on a pilgrimage to Hardy country ('Wessex'/Dorset) one day.

Of course, other statues (including the one below) also caught my eye  in St. John's Gardens:

Just that none of these brought back memories like the statue of the army drummer boy.