The war's portrayal has
always been shaped by contemporary cultural mores, and commemorative
documentaries demonstrate just how much the relationship between the creators
and consumers of popular culture has changed over the last fifty years.
For the fiftieth anniversary of 1914, the BBC
commissioned the twenty-six part series The
Great War, based around archive footage and featuring interviews with
veterans. There was an authoritative narrative voice, but no presenters. For the eightieth
anniversary, it collaborated with an American television company on a
six-part series littered with academic talking-heads. For the ninetieth anniversary,
it has had a range of TV presenter-celebrities - among them Michael Palin,
Dan Snow, Natalie Cassidy and Eamonn Holmes - on a journey of discovery of
their families' military connections. These invariably culminate next to graves and memorials in a display of the right
kind of televisual emotion at the moment the formula
demands and the audience has come to expect.
The focus of these programmes - family history
as a means of understanding the past - is worthy of note in itself. It is
indicative of the dramatic growth of family history as a leisure interest,
perhaps in response to the sense of dislocation inherent in modernity
