Off the Chart: The Crimean War in British Public Consciousness

Abstract

The Crimean War revealed in this issue of 19 is of such rich and varied historical interest as to make a mystery of its relative obscurity with the general public in the UK. My own article adopts a novelist’s perspective to chart some aspects of this popular decline, exploring the treatment of the Siege of Sebastopol through the media of painting, literature, and cinema, and considering whether those aspects of the war that have made the greatest impression on the public mind are also those that make it least commercially attractive. It also examines the more official legacy, from the treatment of war dead to the changing face of sculpted memorials, and by comparing British commemoration with that of Russians in Crimea, discusses the possible role played in national memory by both shame and pride. In a final brief analysis of the 1968 film The Charge of the Light Brigade, I consider the extent to which modern rejection of Victorian values has created historical distortion, and whether a more truthful presentation might better serve the cause of preserving an important war in the British public consciousness.