ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that a helpful framework is to consider how such images flow and connect to discourses of imperial mastery, benevolent partnership and national parochialism. The 1951 Festival of Britain has been re-imagined and resurrected in many different guises. For Consisting of events held up and down the country, the Festival of Britain has mainly and merely become synonymous with the exhibitions on the specially regenerated area of London's South Bank that was often taken at the time to be its centrepiece. The entity termed 'the Commonwealth' signified both the moves towards decolonisation as the empire crumbled, and the attempt to maintain and reinscribe some of the power dynamics of imperialism. The idea of Britain's 'benevolence' to the Commonwealth was frequently articulated by recourse to a language of 'partnership', together with an emphasis on how Britain was helping to manage or engineer peace.
