Don’t mention the war

A cascade of poppies falls from ‘weeping windows’ across Britain. A 50-metre drawing of Wilfred Owen appears in the sand, and is washed away by the sea in which he swam. A silhouetted soldier stands on the white cliffs of Dover. A thousand pumpkins ‘recall’ an antisubmarine airship. You can pretend you are in no-man’s-land in Dorset, or ‘clearing up the immense horrors of trench warfare’ in Dulwich.

We have Great War proms, Great War bake-ins, Great War fashion shows, even Great War Countryfile. Blackadder has been summoned back to the colours. The Royal Mail issues a ‘classic, prestige and presentation’ pack of stamps.

In 2012 David Cameron committed an enormous £50 million to commemorate the first world war, with millions more promised from the Lottery, all of which has been funnelled into the never-ending 14–18 NOW programme. The purpose, he said, was ‘to honour those who served, to remember those who died, and to ensure that the lessons learned live with us for ever’. A reported 150 artists, performers and film-makers rushed to the call of this latter-day Kitchener. Their country needed them. Cameron did not suggest which lessons we might learn. At the time he was struggling to go to war in Syria.

I remain puzzled at the state so extravagantly recalling an event long past. No Britons can recall the ‘11th hour of the 11th day’, and a dwindling number even recall the second world war, to which Remembrance Day tries half-heartedly to shift attention. Yet each year, village memorials see ever more exotic poppies, bugled ‘Last Posts’, minute silences and frozen Boy Scouts. It is an exercise in military nostalgia, a Christianised version of a Sealed Knot re-enactment.