Butterkist Popcorn leaves bitter taste after parking billboard just feet away ...

The Cenotaph stands at 50ft and has been on Whitehall since the end of the First World War. It was not designed as the epicentre of a nation's grief but as a piece of scenery.

After the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the Allied nations agreed there should be 'peace parades'. David Lloyd George had been struck by the sight of troops saluting a symbolic catafalque, the platform for a coffin, in Paris. He asked for a 'prominent artist' to produce something similar.

Celebrated architect Edwin Lutyens came up with a 'cenotaph' – from the Greek word for an 'empty tomb' – on top of a pillar or 'pylon' that would serve as a saluting point for the 16,500 servicemen who would march by it. Lutyens's design was speedily constructed from wood, canvas and plaster and unveiled with such little fuss on the eve of the parade that even he was not invited.

The following day saw a completely unexpected phenomenon. No sooner had troops marched past than grieving families rushed forward to project their own grief on to it, imagining it might somehow contain the spirit of the fallen.

They began to lay flowers around the base. In no

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