Churchill statue may have to be put in museum: Grand-daughter

Emma Soames told the BBC on Saturday that the late Prime Minister was a "complex man" but he was considered a hero by millions.

Soames said she was "shocked" to see the monument in London's Parliament Square boarded up, although she said she understood why this was necessary.

She said it was "extraordinarily sad that my grandfather, who was such a unifying figure in this country, appears to have become a sort of icon through being controversial".

"We've come to this place where history is viewed only entirely through the prism of the present," she told the BBC.

Soames acknowledged her grandfather had often held views which "particularly now are regarded as unacceptable but weren't necessarily then".

However she added: "He was a powerful, complex man, with infinitely more good than bad in the ledger of his life."

She said if people were "so infuriated" by seeing the statue it may be "safer" in a museum.

"But I think Parliament Square would be a poorer place without him," she added.

Churchill's grandson Nicholas Soames said he was "deeply upset" after the statue was vandalised and then boarded up.

"I find it extraordinary that millions and millions of people all over the world who look up to Britain will be astonished that a statue of Churchill and the Cenotaph, our national war memorial, could have been defaced in this disgusting way," he told the Daily Telegraph.

The statue was boxed up ahead of a Black Lives Matter protest in Westminster on Friday evening.

Other monuments have been removed ahead of separate protests planned over the weekend, while the Cenotaph has also been covered.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said other "key statues", including one of Nelson Mandela, would be protected, saying there was a risk statues could become a "flashpoint for violence".

It comes after the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was thrown into the harbour in Bristol during a Black Lives Matter protest on June 7.