ABSTRACT
In Britain one can hardly escape the constant onslaught of TV programmes, commemorative events and exhibitions. In London alone not only the Imperial War Museum or the National Army Museum, but the Transport Museum, the Postal Museum, the Garden Museum, the Cartoon Museum, the Canal Museum, the British Library, the British Film Institute, the Royal Academy of Music even the BBC Proms are caught up in the frenzy and urgency of war remembrance. It seems no stone is left unturned, but as varied as all these events are, they also have something in common: they focus on the experience of British and Commonwealth soldiers and civilians and they want to show the war, talk about the war, feel the war from the perspective of the people, that is to say ‘their’ people, who were caught up in it – in short, they view the war through the prism of memory. Com - memorative events are highly emotional and ‘post-Princess Diana’, tears are unashamedly shed in public screenings and performances that focus on personal testimonies and family memories while current events in conflict zones such as Ukraine, Gaza, Syria and Iraq – diligently covered on TV news
and in newspapers – feel oddly distant. The repeated mantra that ‘the First World War changed all our lives’, suggests that this war, even though it happened a hundred years ago, concerns us more or should affect us more, than the current conflicts in other parts of the world in which a western public is often made to feel unfairly implicated by international security threats, terrorist alerts and refugees fleeing their conflict zones.
