It’s not that I would be without the pyramids. Nor do I think that the Taj Mahal is a waste of good stone. These tombs, monuments to the departed are treasures beyond price. But can you name the pharaohs or the Mughal empress whose death they mark? No, nor can I without the help of Google.

William McIlvanney, whose funeral will take place tomorrow, was one of this country’s most gifted writers and a generous-spirited man. Among the many tributes following his death there were calls for a lasting memorial to his life and work.

It’s part of how communities mark significant loss. Death puzzles and confounds us and so we evolve rituals to ease the immediate pain. We honour the loss of the exceptionally talented or prominent with a permanent statement, often a statue in a public place.

Although an appropriate memorial to William McIlvanney is under discussion it has set me wondering about all the statues that inhabit our city streets.

How many have had the wished-for outcome of keeping the person’s memory alive?

Even if the monument is large and spectacular, it might not do the job intended. For a generation people might recall the person but after that? The Taj Mahal has not managed to keep the name of Mumtaz Mahal from relative obscurity. (She was the favourite wife of a Mughal emperor who commissioned the building.)

Our monuments tend to be much smaller in scale. I wonder what exactly they have achieved.

For example, the streets of Edinburgh are festooned with life-sized statues of dead men and a famous dog. But should a tourist point to any one of them and ask me whom they commemorated – barring the Scott Monument , Greyfrairs Bobby and John Knox – I might be lost for words.

Recently I watched a TV documentary on Scotland’s forgotten scientific genius James Clerk Maxwell. He has a relatively new statue in the city, in George Street. Shamefully, I also learned from the programme that his place of birth was across the street from where I live.

I may be more prone than most to move through life in dream mode. But I wonder how many of Edinburgh citizens have ever stopped at Maxwell’s statue and then taken the trouble to find out more about him.

In Glasgow, thousands daily stream past Donald Dewar’s statue. Many might be able to name him – he died in 2000. But how many could say when he was First Minister and know he delivered the Scottish Parliament? His statue is a good likeness and more characterful than most memorial bronzes. But I would lay money that, before another 10 years have passed, it will be known as "the green man".

Donald Dewar is of much greater contemporary relevance to the people of Glasgow than those immortalised elsewhere in the city. In Cathedral Square stands a benefactor by the name of James Lumsden who died in 1856. Nearby we find James White Overtoun, a philanthropist and businessman who left this life in 1844, and James Arthur whose employees raised the money for his statue following his death in 1895.

I mean no disrespect to any descendants when I ask if these memorials are anything more than urban clutter. Is it time they were tidied away?

Given a free hand – and with an apologetic nod to history – I’d also have a clear-out of George Square. Lord Clyde of the Indian Army and Sir John Moore, the Peninsular War commander, may have resonated with the citizenry in the 1800s. But what significance do they have today?

There they stand alongside Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, Robert Peel and William Ewart Gladstone. It’s as if the beating heart of this modern city has been colonised by the Victorian establishment for time immemorial.

Edinburgh has a different set which ranges from King Edward V11 to William Pitt the younger.

I’m not suggesting we melt them down, though it’s not the worst idea. History remains important. But keeping statues of the forgotten and the irrelevant as urban furniture is as irrational as having great aunt Ruby’s aspidistra in the front window.

If we want to remember the illustrious dead, shouldn’t they be our own?

In my opinion the best and most meaningful memorial to William McIlvanney will be his writing. It’s the one that would matter to him. For me the best way to celebrate his life would be for every secondary school in Scotland to be given his collected works. He was also a teacher after all.

In Kilmarnock, his home town, a campaign had begun to organise a memorial to the author, in addition to two streets that already bear the McIlvanney name. "I don’t think it will end up being a statue or figure of him," Kieran Kelly, the campaign organiser, said. Instead it might be Tam Docherty or another of his fictional characters.

But if the wider nation clamours for a lasting monument elsewhere for William McIlvanney or for another of the giants of this generation, what should happen? Is there even room for another statue in our finest city streets and squares?

I wonder how it would be if we designated a park (The Scottish Statuary?) to which we could move statues that have outlived their relevance. This statue park could become a new visitor attraction; an outdoor museum for students of history.

The move would free up plinths for more recent heroes: for modern leaders and pioneers, for those who display extraordinary talent. They could grace our city centres for a stretch of five years or ten before making way for a successor. As in Trafalgar Square, one plinth could be kept for works of art. Wouldn’t that freshen up the hearts of our cities; inject vibrancy and relevance?

And what about women of merit who have been overlooked in memorials for centuries? I would elevate the fair rents activist Mary Barbour. I’d also give Kate Cranston, who started the Willow Tea Rooms, a leg up along with the artist Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh.

In Edinburgh, I can only recall a statue to one woman. She is an anonymous black woman with a child and stands by Lothian Road. The piece was unveiled in 1986 to represent the city’s stand against apartheid.

Might Dame Muriel Spark earn a plinth in her home town, Auld Reekie, now that her archive is held there in the National Library? What about Elsie Inglis, the remarkable suffragette and doctor, or Dr Sophie Jex-Blake who opened the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women in which Inglis trained? Why have they never been celebrated in this way?

And though I am in no way trying to hasten her end, we do have a first female First Minister who might one day qualify.

By putting Scotland’s statues under review, by debating the merits or otherwise of the people they commemorate, many long-forgotten names will be talked about again. Wasn’t that the original purpose – to have them remembered?