The Great War ......... how we remember it ......... a century on

It is the way of popular history that the way some of it is driven rests on anniversaries and this has certainly been how the media and some historians have approached the Great War.

Manchester Remembering 1914-18

At which point I cannot hide from that simple observation that I have fallen in behind the rest.

The blog regularly marks the centenary of events from that conflict, and last year I published Manchester Remembering 1914-18, which drew on the collection of David Harrop.

Now there is nothing wrong with visiting the past through anniversaries, it is of course a powerful way of delivering history, offering an instant link to an event long gone and allows people to reflect on the differences between that day and its modern counterpart.

But go back into the past and I suspect many great anniversaries were at best marked by a personal reflection or quickly faded as those involved died and the significance of the event was lost in the sweep of history.

So a full century after Agincourt I bet few pondered on that day of battle, and if it did surface it will have been appropriated by the publicity machine of the time to rekindle a wave of patriotism.

At the book launch of Manchester Remembering 1914-18, Central Ref, 2017

All that said, anniversaries are as they say here to stay, and that brings me to the two for today.

It will soon be a year since the publication of Manchester Remembering 1914-18, which had its launch in early February of last year in Central Ref.

I will always be grateful to David for providing the core of the material I used from his collection and the advice he gave at the time, and his continued interest in the blog which often sets him off looking for memorabilia which he knows I will want to write about.

And that I have to say includes material from south east London where I was born and grew up, to Chorlton where I live now.  There are as I tell David always stories, and many of them will feature in his major exhibition also at Central Ref later in the year to mark the anniversary of the Armistice.

Southport, 2014

So over the next brace of weeks I shall be returning to old stories about the book and new ones about David’s exhibition, leaving me only to mention his permanent exhibition featuring some of his collection at the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery and the many other temporary ones he puts on at the request of Art Galleries and local history groups.

Location; The Great War

Pictures; the book launch of Manchester Remembering 1914-18, 2017 courtesy of ALTO•VISUAL and David’s  exhibition in Southport, 2014 from the collection of David Harrop.