Out and About First World War memorials in the heart of London

Article

By Paula Kitching, published 30th July 2014

The First World War had an enormous impact on society and on our landscape, perhaps not through war damage as was the case during the Second World War but through the erection of memorials. It doesn't matter where I am in the UK and often when abroad I will find myself looking at the local war memorial. For me, however, one of the most interesting ways to explore the impact of the First World War responses to it and the desire to mark it is in central London.

London is a city of statues and memorials - they are everywhere. Most people walk past a memorial or statue every day and don't even notice it. Within only a few streets the breadth of the conflict can be appreciated through the memorials.

Memorials are public markers, a way of declaring a desire to remember but also to draw attention to a thing, a person, event or deed. The event that has probably produced the most memorials in the UK is the First World War. Nearly every village and certainly every town and city will have at least one memorial to the men of the that conflict.

Sometimes they contain individual names and on others it is simply to the ‘Glorious Dead'. Sometimes, however, it is to a more specific element or aspect of the war, such as a regiment or a person...

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