ABSTRACT
The public obsession with remembrance is not a consequence of the current age of austerity; it has an established place in British culture that has accelerated in the multichannel media–saturated world of the latter twentieth century. Perhaps most significantly, the Tommy and war are reminders of the limited control that ordinary people have over their lives and their vulnerability in austerity Britain. This chapter describes that there is something metaphorical about the contemporary preoccupation with the war and the consequences of war in an era of austerity and economic crisis. Personalizing the experience of war has enabled remembrance and commemoration to offer media industries a winning combination of audience numbers and cultural legitimacy. In the complex interweaving of past and present that constitutes the construction of historical narratives in the centenary of the First World War combatants, particularly Tommies, of that war and more contemporary conflicts are also seen not merely as victims but, as Woodward suggests, as 'vulnerable heroes'.
