BOURNEMOUTH'S Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum has been savaged in a new book as a collection of 'tourist miscellania' and 'poor works by inept artists'.

Author Mark Fisher, a former Labour arts minister and current MP for Stoke-on-Trent, describes the museum's founding father, Sir Merton Russell-Cotes as: "A collector with more ambition than knowledge and more money than taste."

Laying into the gallery's permanent collection, he declares: "The quality of his collection is at best, uneven. There are poor works by some artists (GF Watts, Arthur Hughes) a terrible Etty, a heavy-handed Frederick Goddall and a small copy of Landseer's Flood in the Highlands."

Even the building itself - Grade I Listed because of its architectural importance - doesn't escape a lashing. "The house is a pile up of styles," he sniffs, going on to describe the frieze in the Main Hall as a: "Drunken comic strip in bas-relief."

Fisher's book; Britain's Best Museums and Galleries, lists 350 establishments he has visited, rating them with stars ranging from five for a collection of 'international reputation and significance' down to one star - awarded to the Russell-Cotes - for an attraction 'worth a detour'.

But, if the Russell-Cotes is feeling slighted by Fisher's comments, they are in excellent company. The Eden Project, York's award-winning Yorvik Viking Centre, Hendon's Royal Air Force Museum and The Cabinet War Rooms in Whitehall all receive the Fisher thumbs-down.

And more than 2,150 other establishments didn't even make it in.