Experiences and contradictions

Our issue, “Revisiting the Great War”, appears just over six months after the centenary of the outbreak of the conflict, and allows us to assess how this hugely symbolic date was commemorated in the United Kingdom. It was no doubt the largest festival of commemoration Britain had ever seen, with a tremendous variety of events, official and unofficial, militaristic, nostalgic or pacifistic, and it brought to light a number of perhaps unexpected contradictions. A powerful official consensus wa..