Listen to English Gazing out to sea... Lyrics

Do you know what "to gaze" at something means? It means to look at something for a long time. And normally the thing that you are gazing at is a long way away. So we might say, for example, that I gaze at the distant hills, or I gaze at the horizon. And where is the best place for gazing? Beside the sea, of course. People often stand on the shore, or on the rocks, or on a cliff, and gaze out to sea. Sometimes they are looking at a boat, far away at sea. Sometimes they are looking at nothing in particular. They are just gazing.
If you go to a place called Crosby, near Liverpool on the west coast of England, you will see 100 men gazing out to sea. They are not real men, however. They are sculptures, made of cast iron. Each one is six feet tall - that is, about 180 cm. They were made by the sculptor and artist Antony Gormley, who modelled them on his own body. His 100 men have not always been at Crosby. For a time they were beside the sea at Cuxhaven in Germany, and later they moved to Stavanger in Norway. But when Antony Gormley first saw the wide, empty beach at Crosby, he knew that this was the right place for his 100 men. But in Britain, you are not allowed just to go to a beach and put 100 statues on it. No, you have to get permission first. You have to ask the local authority for planning consent. In 2005, the local authority agreed that Antony Gormley could put his statues on the beach, and keep them there for 16 months. Some people did not like the statues. They said that they spoiled the beach; or that they disturbed feeding sea-birds; or that they were dangerous. Some people complained because the statues are of naked men, with no clothes. But other people thought that the statues were wonderful, and that they made people think in new ways about the empty beach and the sea. After a lot of argument, the local authority has now agreed that Gormley's 100 men can stay on Crosby beach permanently.
Antony Gormley's sculptures are now quite well known in Britain. We have one of them in Birmingham. It is called "Iron : Man". But his most famous statue is called the Angel of the North. It is a huge statue - over 20 metres tall - of an angel with outspread wings. The wings are the size of the wings on a jumbo jet. It stands on a hill overlooking the town of Gateshead in north-east England. You can see it if you drive north into Newcastle along the main A1 road. At first the Angel of the North was very controversial, but now most people love it. It has become a famous landmark.