Landscape and memory: British televisual representations of the Battle of the Somme

The relationship between landscape and memory is an integral part of the visual design of televisual representations of the First World War. This chapter will show how images of landscape in British television documentaries have been mediated by two levels of representation; (i) the physical landscape of remembrance marked by memorials and cemeteries, which act as portals to (ii) the emotional landscape, a place forever scarred by the events of 1914–18. The physical reminders, memorials and cemeteries, mean that the thousands of tourists that visit the former Western Front are already aware that they are visiting a site that contains the remains of the millions of men who lost their lives during the war. The place names along the former Western Front resonate with meaning and British television documentaries about the war have transferred this resonance to the small screen by utilizing accepted representations of the war’s cultural inheritance to invoke a code to describe the indescribable.