Echoes and Shadows: Creative Interferences from World War II

Citation

Watson R (2019) Echoes and Shadows: Creative Interferences from World War II. Miranda, (18). https://doi.org/10.4000/miranda.15777

Abstract
Academic and poet Roderick Watson reflects on memories of war and the popular culture of war that influenced his younger years only to reappear in the imagery of his later creative work. A critical reflection is offered on popular representations of the Second World War, and how these have become a foundational myth of modern British identity. Attention is paid to his first major collection True History on the Walls (1976) and the poems that make explicit reference to the conflict of 1939-45.

Keywords
memory heritage and childhood; British war comics; popular sentiment in representations of Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain; the funeral of Winston Churchill; Hiroshima and Nagasaki; mythology of Claude Eatherly; Cuban crisis and atomic terror; Peter Watkins and The War Game; the holocaust; the Allied bombing campaign and area bombing; Roderick Watson True History on the Walls

Journal
Miranda, Issue 18

• Published version