How many motorists passing along today's busy North Circular Road and Regents Park Road give the merest glance at the 16-foot high bronze statue of a naked lady that stands at the junction of the two roads?

Very few, we suspect, but when she was unveiled on October 20, 1927, she created a sensation.

The statue is properly called La Delivrance but is known affectionately as 'Dirty Gertie' or 'The Naked Lady'. The unveiling was performed by Britain's Prime Minister during the First World War, Lloyd George, and the occasion was described in the local newspaper as the most brilliant in Finchley for many years'.

More than 8,000 people from all over London attended. All the Finchley councillors and nearly all their officials were in the audience as were the local MP and representatives of the Middlesex County Council and Hendon Urban District Council.

The bronze statue was the work of France's most eminent sculptor of the early 20th Century, Emile Guillaume. It was inspired by the Allied victories at the two battles of the Marne, one in 1914 and the other in 1918, which saved Paris from German occupation. The statue was exhibited in the 1920 Paris Salon where it was bought by the English newspaper magnate Lord Rothermere who decided to donate it to the Finchley Urban District Council in memory of his mother who had lived for many years in Totteridge.

Rothermere was particularly insistent in his address to the crowd that the statue was in no sense a war memorial. Lloyd George's view was that it was a symbol of victory in a war that had delivered us from a great military despotism'.

It is a curious fact that nowhere in its long report on the ceremony does the newspaper describe the nature of the statue itself. Neither did any of the speakers. Nudity is never mentioned. There are only references such as this triumphant figure' or this masterpiece of art'.

This probably reflects the |social| taboos |and sexual| prudery of the times. We can be sure that the event caused at least a frisson of excitement among the population because, as the local newspaper reported, people came in thousands from all parts of London but they found that all the best places had been secured by Finchley and Golders Green residents, some of whom had arrived more than three hours before the proceedings were timed to commence'.

Times may have changed but the sight of a shapely female torso, if we are to judge by the tabloid press, still attracts attention. Interestingly, the young teenager who was the model for Guillaume's statue died very recently and even made an obituary in The Times.

In spite of our familiarity with, and the artistic neglect suffered by La Delivrance, she remains for many of us one of London's most striking statues and a superb example of the sculptor's art.