THIS week marks the centenary of the Battle of Amiens – a great British victory. So why is hardly anyone celebrating or even aware that it happened?
And what does this tell us about the way history is taught in our schools and about our increasingly fractured sense of national identity?
Sure, Prince William and Prime Minister Theresa May marked the centenary yesterday at a memorial service at Amiens Cathedral in Northern France.
Yes, it’s true that there have been one or two slightly embarrassed news items by reporters playing catch-up via a quick scan of Wikipedia.
But for the most part this vital moment in our history has gone all but unnoticed. Why?
I am sure the fact that we won didn’t help.
As George Orwell and others have noticed, we British have always been more drawn to tales of heroic defeat – the Charge of the Light Brigade, Scott’s doomed expedition to the Antarctic, Dunkirk – than we have been to stories of resounding victory.
Read the rest in the Express.
