ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses how the employment of specific images communicates issues of politics, society and identity across modern Britain. The visual heritage of the Great War is utilised to provide frames and outlines to understand historical and contemporary issues across communities and groups within Britain. The image of the soldiers in the trenches, the battlefields and the war cemeteries are mobilised to provide context and meaning for wider concerns. This aspect of the cultural heritage of the war is significant as it structures a range of points regarding identity politics as associations and links are developed and sustained with the imagery of the world's first global conflagration. Indeed, the Great War forms a cultural resource for current society as groups draw on visions of the war to evidence difference and attachment. Indeed, the evocation of the Great War through its imagery provides a powerful social and political tool for groups who seek to promote alternative, discordant and non-conformist identities.
