Gagarin's daughter unveils monument to first spaceman in London

"I am very proud to unveil the monument in honour of my father in the city, which welcomed him cordially 50 years ago," said the director of the Moscow Kremlin Museums Yelena Gagarin, who is the daughter of the first Soviet cosmonaut. She arrived in the British capital particularly to attend an event devoted to the 50th anniversary of the first manned spaceflight and 50 years since a meeting between Yuri Gagarin and British Queen Elizabeth II in 1961. "I am very glad that the residents of London paid tribute today to the desire to explore the unknown space, which heralded his spaceflight," Yelena Gagarin pointed out.

A cousin of the British Queen Michael Prince of Kent, the chief of the Federal Space Agency Vladimir Popovkin and Chief Executive of the British Council Martin Davidson were also attending the unveiling ceremony.

The monument is an exact replica of the monument, which Anatoly Novikov had built in Lyubertsy, the Moscow Region. The first world spaceman Gagarin is smiling and walking in the spacesuit without the hamlet along a symbolic orbit in the form of the Moebius strip around the globe. Sculptor Novikov has made the original monument on the occasion of the 50th birth anniversary of the first Soviet cosmonaut in 1984.

The initiators of the monument to Gagarin erected in London hope that a metallic statue unveiled not far from the Trafalgar Square will be very symbolic. Harold Macmillan, who occupied the post of the British prime minister in the sixties of the previous century, received the Soviet cosmonaut during his visit to Great Britain at the Old Admiralty Building, which is situated nearby. The monument should not only remind about the feat of Gagarin, but also should give a fresh impetus to realize a major potential of bilateral cooperation in space exploration.