The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

London, War, and the Architecture of Remembrance
without its own dedicated memorial culture, at least of the kind habitually
associated with the commemoration of military conflict.
This startling lack of commemoration for such a significant and
tragic episode in London’s history must be considered in the light of Doreen
Massey’s statement elsewhere in this book that the purpose of monuments
“is to gather together in the consensus of a common belonging, a shared
identity, all those who walk by.” The absence of monuments thus suggests a
fracturing of this sense of a shared identity—what Boyer labels a “memory
crisis”—that necessarily carries profound implications for the cohesion of
urban society.
THE GLORIOUS DEAD
While critics have recognized that London has historically lacked the kinds
of national monuments that have formed such an integral part of the meanings
of some other European capitals, 9 the city is nevertheless fully immersed
in the culture of war. London abounds in representations of national
victories, and monuments to their glorious but dead victors.
Most famous and numerous are the monuments of the Great War
of 1914 to 1918 that also pervade every corner of empire and foreign field
4.2 | The glorious dead: the
Cenotaph, London. Designed
by Edwin Lutyens.