The First World War has different resonance and meaning across the Commonwealth nations, which should be reflected in the UK and Scottish government’s commemoration plans.
EPA/Andy Rain
Scottish first minister Alex Salmond’s speech at the recent UK and Commonwealth First World War centenary commemoration subtly emphasised its politicised nature. At no point did he use the term “British…
‘Memorial diplomacy’, on display in June’s D-Day commemorations, is a mode of symbolic soft power politics which uses sites of memory and commemorative events to boost relations.
AAP
When French president François Hollande rose to deliver the keynote address for the 70th anniversary of the D-Day Landings earlier this year, he set in motion an unprecedented five-year cycle of commemoration…
A field of poppies, symbolising the soldiers’ sacrifice, has been sown in Northwood, London, for the centenary of the First World War, but the civilian losses are no less worthy of remembrance.
AAP/Newzulu/Stephen Chung
Hiroshima Day is the closest we come to a day that focuses on the plight of civilians in war. The two atomic bombs dropped on Japan immediately killed over 120,000 civilians, but over the years the day…
Germans today have little appetite for constructing new national myths about the Great War, or reclaiming old ones, because of painful associations with the more recent past.
Robert Scarth/Flickr
There is not much of a question of who controls the national myth of the Great War in Germany today. Nobody in particular seems to want to claim it. More interesting, however, is considering who has sought…
On July 24 1914 the British cabinet met to discuss the diplomatic situation in Europe, which had deteriorated rapidly since the assassination of the Austrian archduke, Franz Ferdinand, a month before…
The Eastbourne Pier fire reveals much about our enduring love of the seaside. As we bemoan the loss of a symbol of coastal fun and pleasure, the disaster and recent suspicions of arson also hint at the…
Flanders Fields was once the frontline of war – it now is a place of remembrance.
Mark Wainwright/Flickr
In Belgium as in Australia, there are no longer any surviving veterans of the Great War to witness the commemorations of its centenary. However, just as in Australia, there remains an immense interest…
In recent years, the service of troops from France’s then-colonies in both world wars has been the object of sustained presidential attention.
EPA/Philippe Wojazer
In vogue among the political left during the events in Paris in May 1968, the French term récupération refers to the danger of “the Establishment”, be it the government or a political party, seizing on…
Many parties have a vested interest in shaping the way we remember the Great War ahead of its centenary, but some are more equal than others.
EPA/Thomas Bregardis
When prime minister Tony Abbott declared at Villers-Bretonneux that “no place on earth has been more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than these fields in France”, Australian attention focused again…
With the exquisite turn of phrase for which she was so highly regarded, Barbara Tuchman once likened the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war against Serbia of 28 July 1914 to an example of “the bellicose…
The Wall of Death at the former Auschwitz concentration camp – a place for solemnity, not smiles.
Nicole Low/AAP Image
Ouch. I think my entire body physically cringed when I came across the latest story of a misjudged tweet gone viral this week: the case of Breanna Mitchell, the naïve teenager and self-styled “Princess…
The BBC Proms, with justification, is flaunted as the world’s largest and most significant annual music festival. A bronze bust of the conductor Sir Henry Wood, is placed in front of the organ facing the…
David Mitchell has moved from pen to tweet.
Ian West/PA Archive
Booker-shortlisted novelist David Mitchell is currently launching his new short story The Right Sort – on Twitter. The award-winning author of Cloud Atlas and number9dream is tweeting his story twice daily…
It is quite clear that Abbott is a western traditionalist when it comes to his interest in the past.
Dean Lewins/ AAP
Wherever does our prime minister get his technique for historical analysis? Just before last week’s chaotic carbon tax repeal scenes in Canberra, prime minister Tony Abbott offended the People’s Republic…
Now that Otto von Bismarck, he knew what he was doing.
Jacek Turczyk/EPA
Karl Marx warned against conjuring up the past to explain the present, but really, we have been somewhere very like the Ukraine before. Benjamin Disraeli stood in the British parliament 150 years ago condemning…
Maybe the one on the right would have worked?
Mark Baker
Henry Irving, School of Advanced Study, University of London
“Keep Calm and Carry On” is now one of the most recognisable slogans in British history. Its resilient message has become extraordinarily commonplace, with the phrase used to sell everything from mugs…
A bit better than a car park.
Diocese of Leicester
Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs … And tell sad stories of the death of kings These melancholic words, uttered by Shakespeare’s Richard II, tell us of a preoccupation with death and mortality…
Richard Strauss saw – and heard – it all. Born before German unification, he lived through two world wars and the division of Germany into East and West, dying that same year, in 1949. Musically he also…
The Vandals were buried beneath the awful weight of metaphor.
Dr Case
It might seem a stretch to say history has been unkind to the Vandals. After all, this barbarian group did as much as anyone to sound the last rites of the Roman Empire in the west. They captured the rich…
The key, as so often in sport, is timing.
Joe Castro/AAP Image
Why is AFL the main sport in Victoria and the other southern States while New South Wales and Queensland follow rugby? That’s long been a vexed question, but we may now be closer to an answer. In Melbourne…