For our London in-person meet-up and walking tour of Tower Hill Cemetery and Whitehall, we were joined by Lynelle Howson (Commonwealth War Graves Commission) and Professor Mark Connelly (previous Head of School of History, University of Kent). Together, they helped us examine memorial spaces as both physical sites and cultural symbols, shaped by history, politics and institutional decision-making.
Lynelle Howson offered insight from her work at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, prompting us to think about how institutional decisions influence who is remembered, how stories are told, and what forms commemoration takes. We reflected on the challenges of representing the diversity of those who served, particularly across the Commonwealth, and how decisions around language, design and storytelling in monuments and sculptures can either reinforce or challenge dominant narratives.
These discussions led us to think more broadly about how cultures of remembrance change over time. We explored whether memorials can act as instruments of collective grief shaped by national intention, and how public expressions of mourning have evolved, particularly in moments of national crisis or loss (thinking about Princess Diana’s death as a particularly pivotal moment in national and global mourning). This session again reinforced the idea that remembrance is something that is continually renegotiated, reflecting the values, tensions and identities of the present as much as the past.
Professor Mark Connelly guided us through the memorial landscape of Whitehall, encouraging us to analyse the symbolism embedded within these spaces and to think critically about how war is remembered at a national level. We discussed the idea that memorials are not neutral, but act as forms of political memory, constructed to convey particular narratives about sacrifice, victory and national identity. The Cenotaph’s deliberate simplicity, while allowing space for collective mourning, also raises questions about who is included in that silence, and whose experiences remain unspoken. We discussed how the minimal nature of the Cenotaph’s design allows it to hold multiple meanings, highlighting both its power as a shared site of remembrance and its openness to reinterpretation over time.
We also looked at the Machine Gunners Corp and Royal Artillery memorials, both also cared for by English Heritage. The Machine Gun Corps Memorial felt strikingly removed from the mechanised violence it represents, instead drawing on ideals of classical, almost ethereal beauty through its Grecian-style sculpture. This contrast is deliberate, rather than depicting the brutality of industrial warfare directly, it reframes it through a more traditional visual language of heroism and sacrifice. In doing so, the memorial sanitises and distances the reality of mechanised death, making it more culturally acceptable within a broader tradition of commemorating (and glorifying) war through beauty rather than discomfort.
This contrasts against the Royal Artillery memorial, which presents the realities of mechanised warfare far more directly, with its huge sculpted artillery piece and depiction of a fallen soldier making the physical and emotional cost of war difficult to ignore. Rather than softening or abstracting violence, it confronts the viewer with its weight and permanence, acknowledging the industrial scale of death that defined the conflict. Looking at these different memorials alongside one another highlighted how different design choices can either distance us from the brutality of war through idealisation, or force us to engage more directly with its consequences.
