ON July 19, 1919, a vast procession of 15,000 servicemen and women seven miles long wound its way through the streets of London, past a naval pageant on the Thames and saluted the King Emperor, George V, at the end of The Mall. It marched to the acclaim of an enormous and elated crowd. The so-called Peace Parade celebrated not only the end of hostilities in the First World War eight months previously, but also the Treaty of Versailles, signed three weeks before. It brought together soldiers from the nations, colonies and Dominions that had fought for the Allied cause during the conflict, from France, Belgium and America to China, Japan, Siam and New Zealand. There was only one important omission—the Indian contingent was delayed on its journey and paraded alone a couple of weeks later on August 2.
At one point, the triumphant mood dramatically subsided. As the massed ranks of troops marched down Whitehall, they passed a tall thin monument hastily fashioned from plaster, timber and canvas to look like stone. It rose by stages from a low podium to a surmounting tomb draped with a Union Flag pall and a laurel wreath. It is from this elevated tomb, honouring those buried elsewhere, that the monument takes its familiar name, from the Greek for empty tomb: the ‘Cenotaph’. Where the tall, dignifying base ends and the tomb begins is impossible to tell. To either side were fixed three standards and at each end was a further laurel wreath with the inscription of the date and the words The Glorious Dead. For the parade, there stood at the corners four sentries with their arms reversed.
Denne historien er fra November 11, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra November 11, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.