1930 -

Sculptor. Born in Solihull, son of a garage owner, he studied at Birmingham College of Art. He did his military service with the Royal Army Medical Corps, and then went on to teach, principally at Stourbridge (1957-60) and at Guildford (1966-68) schools of art. He lost his job at Guildford after participating in demonstrations and sit-ins, and, although briefly reinstated, lost it again when Guildford was merged with Farnham College of Art. In the early 1960s Walters was involved in an annual sculpture project sponsored by the Yugoslavian government, in which an international cast of sculptors created works for a sculpture park, charging only for their expenses. Walters’s first important public work in Britain, Barrier, for Nine Elms Public Library, London, unveiled in 1964, is a semi-abstract work representing the “struggle for knowledge and enlightenment”. His work then became increasingly political. In 1974 he created an anti-fascist sculpture, entitled The Wheel, for the sculpture park at Kostanjevica in Slovenia. The year 1985 saw three works by Walters erected in London: a statue of the anti-imperialist labour politician and CND campaigner, Fenner Brockway, in Red Lion Square, the Memorial to the International Brigade on the South Bank, and the colossal bust of Nelson Mandela, outside the Royal Festival Hall. Walters’s growing reputation as a lively portraitist brought him many further commissions for statues and busts of left wing politicians and union leaders. His statue of Harold Wilson was unveiled by Tony Blair in Huddersfield in 1999. At the time of his death, Walters was working on statues of Nelson Mandela for Parliament Square, and of Sylvia Pankhurst for College Green, Westminster.