The Fallen Icarus

Sited in the Welsh part of Hay-on-Wye Cemetery is the most extraordinary war memorial I have ever seen.

It commemorates Lancelot Steele Dixon, “Lanty”, a young pilot who died in a flying accident very early in the Second World War. Lanty was the son of Christine Sabatini, a highly gifted sculptor; through her second marriage, Lanty was the step-son of the famous historical romance writer Rafael Sabatini, whose worldwide bestsellers included The Sea Hawk, Scaramouche, and Captain Blood.

Christine and Raphael, unknown date

In April 1940, some time before the Battle of Britain started, Lanty was training to be a fighter pilot. His mother had a house at Clifford, near Hay-on-Wye, and on 9 April Lanty set off in a trainer aircraft to buzz her house for a joke. He miscalculated and his aircraft crashed and burst into flames at Winforton, Herefordshire, on the other side of the River Wye, killing him. His grief-struck mother, who had witnessed the accident, made the memorial to him that same year.

The memorial consists of a very large figure of the fallen Icarus. In the legend, Icarus died after he flew too near the sun and its hot rays melted his wax wings, causing him to fall to his death in the sea. Christine’s memorial shows the dead Icarus lying on dry land, with the huge feathers of his wings draped over him.

The face is thought to be modelled on that of Lanty but of him as a boy rather than as a man of 23 years of age (“in the 24th year of his age”).

That a mother made such a memorial commemorating her son is quite possibly a unique occurrence, given that large memorials made out of stone or metal are almost invariably created by men, and moreover men who are not directly related to the dead person. The rawness of the grief behind the design makes it very uncomfortable to look at, yet Christine clearly wanted Lanty remembered for the memorial is sited in a very public place.

It could hardly stand out more from the other graves in Hay Cemetery. It is deeply moving, yet also so disquieting in its intensity that it is impossible to forget it.

JENNIE MACK GRAY, February 2026

Above: the beautifully sculptured wings show the straps which had attached them to Icarus’s shoulders. The melting feathers drape the body like a shroud.

‘Mater Luctuosa Fecit’ : ‘His Grieving Mother Made This’.