The Korean War in Britain

The central theme running through Grace Huxford’s important book is the complexity of how the Korean War, and more generally the wider Cold War conflict, is remembered. Not for nothing does the subtitle tell the reader the book is about forgetting, rather than remembering. Whereas the two World Wars dominate memory, the Cold War struggles to maintain its place within popular culture. This was vividly illustrated by the 2014 decision to move the Lutyens-designed Great War memorial in St Peter’s Square, Manchester, as part of the redevelopment of the square. Previously hemmed in between tramlines, the war memorial was cleaned and moved to a more open aspect, providing a greater commemorative spectacle. A consequence of the move, however, was the destruction of the Manchester Peace Garden, installed in the mid-1980s as part of the City Council’s anti-nuclear stance. Although the impetus for the move was economic, care was taken to enhance Manchester’s primary memory site for the First World, at the expense of eradicating its Cold War past

Citizenship · Cold war · Forgetting · Nothing · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spectacle · Theme (computing · World War II · Chinese history and philosophy · Japanese History and Culture · Psychology · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies · History · Law · Philosophy