"Plymouth, home of Drake, the Pilgrim Fathers and Mayflower, was used to selling a different tourist image to this."
Bernard Falk meets Plymouth-based portrait artist Robert Lenkiewicz, who has gained notoriety by creating a spectacular mural in the city's Barbican area. The mural is enormous - spanning some 3,000 square feet - and adorns the side of a furniture warehouse. During the summer months it can attract 15,000 tourists a week.
Ostensibly, the mural's theme is Elizabethan philosophy, but it is replete with secrets. Scan the faces of the multitude of characters in the painting and you'll find children from the local council flats and vagrants like Ted - better known locally as Diogenes. Robert Lenkiewicz is using his talent as an artist to shine a light on the plight of 'dossers' like Diogenes - who he feels have often been rendered invisible by Plymouth's authorities.
Originally broadcast 2 April, 1974.
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