Sound and its subtle, malleable possibilities for interpretation can be a valuable tool for those trying to capture pasts that have been erased, marginalised or forgotten.
Nora Waln lived in Germany through the rise of the Nazi Party, leaving shortly before Kristallnacht.
Everett Collection (with Amazon image inset)
From ‘islands of pain’ to the ‘peril of exposure,’ writers have captured the fear, emptiness and despair that characterize life during the current pandemic, writes a poet and English scholar.
Devastation: how Hiroshima looked the day after the atom bomb was dropped.
Everett Collection via Shutterstock
Kwame Nkrumah and Ali Mazrui associated nuclear weapons with imperialism and racism, but proposed different approaches to address the problem they present.
A low aerial view of Monte Cassino Abbey, south-east of Rome, after the February 1944 bombing.
(Wikimedia Commons/The Imperial War Museum)
In 1944, the former archbishop of Canterbury mounted a case to preserve the Italian abbey, renowned for centuries for scholarship and devotion, but Allied forces had just destroyed it.
The Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated 75 years ago as the Second World War was coming to an end.
(AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
After half of all European Jews were killed by the Nazis, the post-Holocaust credo of Jews around the world has been “Never again!” But there’s been a surge in anti-Semitism since 2017.
The way in which the pandemic has altered the maternity experience has unexpected echoes with expectant mothers during the second world war.
Winston Churchill giving his final address, during the 1945 election campaign, at Walthamstow Stadium, East London.
Wikipedia, the collections of the Imperial War Museums
Klaus W. Larres, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Even a highly popular and respected leader can lose an election, writes a historian – especially if they don’t have a plan for the future. Churchill was one of them.
Photos of British singer Vera Lynn are seen in a window, as her funeral procession is led through the village of Ditchling, southern England, July 10, 2020.
(AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
We can celebrate Dame Vera while rejecting racist myths about Second World War Britain and those who seek to use Lynn to advance a xenophobic nostalgia.
Squadron Leader Douglas Bader CO of No Squadron seated on his Hawker Hurricane after the Battle of France, September 1940.
Devon S A (F/O), Royal Air Force official photographer, Imperial War Museum