This is a statue to the writer Oscar Wilde  by the artist Maggi Hambling. It’s called “A Conversation with Oscar Wilde” and was installed in 1998, in Adelaide Street, Charing Cross. Hambling created it from green granite and bronze and shows Wilde rising from a sarcophagus, inviting passers-by to sit down and converse with him. A committee of actors, poets, and writers (which included Seamus Heaney) picked this design after  twelve artists had been invited to submit their ideas for a statue.