Centenaries, museum audiences and discourses of commemoration: remembering the First World War 2014-2018

This article explores public attitudes both to the First World War as a historic event, and to its Centenary as a commemorative occasion. Through an analysis of exit interviews with visitors to two contrasting Centenary-related museum exhibitions in 2014 and 2018, we place these attitudes within the larger context of the War’s evolving meanings and representations in British society, and the immediate circumstances of the Centenary period. Our research reveals the varying levels of connectedness people express to the First World War and to wider cultural assumptions about the meanings and place of commemoration. This is expressed in sometimes specific and nuanced ways, but more often through a more repetitive symbolic vocabulary. We argue that it is the mechanism of the centenary itself as a cultural process that facilitates the easy adoption of an established discourse of war – evoking tropes of sacrifice, futility, a duty to remember or learn lessons – and for referring to the War and its significance for today’s society.