Unveiled in 1998, it takes the form of a bench-like green granite sarcophagus, with a bust of Wilde emerging from the upper end, with a hand clasping a cigarette.

The committee, led by Jeremy Isaacs, included the actors Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen, and the poet Seamus Heaney.

[1] The statue is located in central London between Trafalgar Square and Charing Cross Station, behind St Martin's in the Fields church.

)[5] Tom Lubbock, chief art critic of The Independent,[6] while acknowledging the need for a memorial in London to Wilde, and commending the project for its "real and proper Victorian public spirit", thoroughly condemned the piece itself, in design and execution, comparing it to a Madame Tussauds waxwork.

We have nothing for history – only the whimsical notion of us chatting cheerfully with this anodyne figment.He compared the "macaroni tangle of undulating tubey strands" to a sort of cadaver tomb called transi, part of medieval tomb sculpture depicting rotting flesh and the resulting worms, concluding that ultimately the sculpture was not about Wilde or the viewing public, but a reflection of Hambling herself.