Afterword

Abstract

Between July and November of 2014 volunteers gradually covered the moat around the Tower of London in 888,246 ceramic red poppies, one for every British and British colonial life lost in the First World War. For five months, the Tower looked as though surrounded by a lake of blood fed from a torrent that gushed from one of the windows, a sanguinary image reinforced by the installation’s official title, ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’, which was taken from an anonymous combatant poet’s unsigned will. Striking by day and positively eerie by night, the commemoration was popularly judged a great success; the Royals, as well as over five million others, visited the site, and after 11 November 2014 the ceramic poppies were sold with the proceeds going to military charities. There were some dissenting views as to the effectiveness of the event, most notably from the Guardian, but they were largely dismissed as too highbrow and unpatriotic.