appropriate monument for the experience of the British public, considering that the vast majority of the British dead were buried overseas. Nonetheless, Moriarty believed that the Cenotaph, "...although popular, was too abstract in form and generalised in its commemorative allusion to fully satisfy the need for a focus of grief." This, Moriarty felt, was the reason that many local memorials, including some by Lutyens, adopted some form of figurative sculpture, such as a statue of a soldier. According to the historian Alex King, the Cenotaph fitted the convention of a shrine, such as the temporary memorials to the dead established across London during the war, including the Hyde Park shrine. King believed that the public response, particularly the laying of flowers, treated the Cenotaph as a shrine—a place for paying respects to the dead. Nonetheless, the austerity and apparent simplicity of the Cenotaph leaves its meaning open to a wide variety of interpretations, not all of which have been in keeping with Lutyens's intentions. Some ascribed imperialistic or nationalistic meanings to the monument, including Haig, who called it "a symbol of the empire's unity". The Catholic Herald called it a "pagan monument" and felt that it was insulting to Christianity, and other traditional Christian groups were displeased by the lack of religious symbolism. Lutyens was a pantheist, heavily influenced by his wife's involvement with Theosophy. He opposed overt religious symbolism on the Cenotaph and in his work with the IWGC, a position which did not endear him to the church. Roderick Gradidge, an architect and author of a biography of Lutyens, commented on Lutyens's use of geometry—"He [Lutyens] recognised that in this careful proportioning system he had hit on something that people could recognise though never understand; a sort of music of the spheres which expressed what they felt about the horrifying destruction [...] both of human life and the shape of society itself." The American historian Jay Winter described the Cenotaph as displaying a "striking minimalism". According to Winter, the Cenotaph "managed to transform a victory parade [...] into a time when millions could contemplate the [...] inexorable reality of death in war," and was "a work of genius because of its simplicity. It says so much because it says nothing at all. It is a form on which anyone could inscribe his or her own thoughts, reveries, sadness." He believed that, in designing an empty tomb, "the tomb