ABSTRACT
I suspect that most people who have picked up this book will have, at sometime or other, wandered around a heritage site whispering into the ear of a slightly irritated companion about the omissions and great acts of forgetting which are on display. At exhibitions, monuments and historic buildings around the world questions are raised about the peoples and events which are implicitly present but not explicitly referred to. Trips to British stately homes, for example, can often raise the following questions: where is the context for the artefacts on display? Why the reluctance to account for the colonial relations which led to their acquisition? Why is there no attempt to acknowledge the perniciousness of monarchy and the social inequalities it naturalises? Not just academics, curators or heritage professionals engage in this sort of critique-all sorts of people, particularly politicised ‘minorities’, are hungry for a more radical take on this nation’s history and keen to see themselves written into the story of Britain. However, in a sense, these criticisms directed at the more traditional end of the heritage market are easy to make. What is harder is finding a way of expressing discomfort with heritage projects which have attempted to take on board critiques of the sector’s exclusiveness, and which have made concerted efforts to include and ‘speak’ to racial and cultural minorities.
