LONDON (Reuters) - A piece of modern art commissioned to honour wartime leader Winston Churchill has been lambasted by his grandson as "absurd, silly and undignified".
The 2.1-metre (yard) high timber tower takes pride of place in Westminster Hall at the Houses of Parliament and was created at a cost of 50,000 pounds after Churchill was voted the most famous Briton in a 2002 BBC poll.
Nicholas Soames, Churchill's grandson, was quoted by Friday's Daily Mail as saying the sculpture resembled "nothing more than a pile of upturned grocery boxes".
"My family thinks it is absurd. It is not serious, not sensible, not dignified, just BBC silly," said Soames, who is also the Conservatives' defence spokesman.
The work was paid for with the proceeds from telephone votes in a BBC poll.
The sculpture by Canadian Paul de Monchaux was unveiled earlier this month and stands on the site of Churchill's ceremonial lying-in-state in 1965.
Facsimiles of Churchill's typewritten speech drafts, which his staff referred to as "hymn sheets", are embedded in the work.
