feature World War 1 Exhibition 19th and 20th July 2014 By Sir David Wright Professional historians can be perplexed by the popularisation of history. They welcome the idea that light should be shed more widely on events of which the anniversaries appear periodically in the calendar. But their well-engrained attachment to careful analysis of data makes them nervous about the risk of popularisation strengthening myth, prejudice and trivialisation. The centenary of The Great War has furnished ample evidence to support these anxieties. It has been most graphically evoked in a debate over suggestions that certain TV comedy portrayals might provide worthy commentary on historical truth. Thankfully this risk has been countered by more worthy and valuable attempts to analyse the causes of The Great War in a serious, considered, yet accessible manner. There have been excellent television debates in which experienced and talented historians have debated alternative scenarios. The broadsheets have sponsored well researched and balanced supplements. And at the local level, communities have come together to see how The Great War affected the lives, and deaths, of their antecedents. The work done by the Melbourn History Group, with contributions from their counterparts in Meldreth and Barrington, in the exhibition in All Saints Church over the weekend of 19-20 July stands as a fine example of the application of local historical research and data collection at this time of reflection and memory. Members of local communities, who attended the exhibition in substantial numbers, showed a touching combination of appreciation and engagement in what had been prepared for their
scrutiny. The local historians who took on this challenge deserve applause and gratitude for what they achieved. The exhibition was well planned and executed. It combined high level historical explanation of the background to and conduct of The Great War and at the same time well researched local level involvement in both the times of the conflict and its impact on local communities. Naturally the exhibition had to have a visually arresting panel of description of life in the trenches. But it sought to go much further than the familiar. It was particularly striking and relevant that at the same time as giving a full chronology of the main events of continued on page 14
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