David Strittmatter. Memory, Heritage and Preservation and 20th-Century England Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. Pp. 299. $99.00 (cloth).
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: In Memory, Heritage and Preservation and 20th-Century England, David Strittmatter explores the relationship between commemorative practices and England's "national narrative" (1).Focusing mainly on the period between World War I and the mid-1960s, the book is structured around case studies that examine six locations of historical significance: battlefields (the purported locations of the Battles of Hastings and Bosworth respectively), the sites of major political events (the signing of Magna Carta and the Peterloo Massacre), and the venues of international expositions (the Crystal Palace and the White City).Strittmatter's principal concern is how "the revival, creation, or erasure of heritage sites" operated "in service of promoting national identity" (1).Each chapter presents a "biography of place" (1) that investigates individual sites' histories and their implication in broader sociopolitical phenomena.The first case study traces the evolution of Hastings from a place of pilgrimage and the site of a stately home to becoming a location of diplomatic significance in the context of Britain and France's entente cordiale.Strittmatter notes the strategic use of language in a commemorative plaque that fashions the battlefield as a symbol of the "fusion of the English and Norman peoples" (50-51).Geopolitics likewise played into the shifting fortunes of Runneymede, the site where King John acceded to Magna Carta in 1215.Largely ignored until the interwar years, Runneymede became a cause célèbre when the UK government agreed to sell the site in 1921, before public backlash against this apparent affront to national pride led to the government reneging on the sale.As Strittmatter identifies, Runneymede subsequently played a role in Anglo-American relations, with British and American politicians alike making speeches recognizing Magna Carta's influence on the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.Symptomatic of this, the American Bar Association funded the rotunda memorial at Runneymede, and the site also houses a monument to John F Kennedy.The commemorative functions of other sites analyzed by Strittmatter are more contested.Bosworth, as the site where Henry Tudor, a Welshmen, defeated the English monarch Richard III, was interpreted differently by respective interest groups representing people of Welsh and English heritage, which Strittmatter interprets as an example of "the fragmentation of British identity" (98).A confrontational memorial politics too is discernible in relation to Peterloo.While rapid urbanization effaced traces of the events of 1819 from central Manchester, the St Peter's site retained potency for social reformers, members of trades unions, and campaigners for the right to protest.Peterloo's leftist associations contrasted with how the Crystal Palace was intended to cultivate patriotism and consensus.Built to house the 1851 Great Exhibition before being relocated to Sydenham, the Crystal Palace's Victorian grandeur remained a symbol of British triumphalism until its destruction by fire in 1936.Although originally built for similar
Source: Journal of British Studies
DOI: 10.1017/jbr.2024.44
Author: Alexander Scott
Institution: National Museums Liverpool
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4404726482