Cathy Ross is the head of later London history and collections at the Museum of London
Yes: The war has become too much of a comfort zone for museums. It's so easy to 'do' because it has all the ingredients that guarantee success: great stories, real people, distinctive objects, television back-up, sentiment, danger and a happy ending.
Part of the comfort zone is the all-pervasive notion that the second world war was, above all, 'the people's war' and that personal memories are the best way of understanding it.
This is understandable, but too much reminiscence about the same sort of experience can lead to empathy fatigue. It can also reduce the war to just another 'how we used to live' episode: like the Victorians, but with gas masks.
Shouldn't we be trying harder to use the personal memory approach to tell some different, and perhaps less comfortable, stories? Ones that remember, for example, the ugly bits of the national psyche that emerged from war alongside the admirable. This would also enrich the citizenship learning that war is said to be good for.
Less nostalgia might also mean more space for other events of the 1940s, such as Indian independence. Winning the war and losing the Empire were tied up with each other and the various anniversaries provide a great opportunity for museums to develop a broader repertoire of stories - if we can get out of our comfort zone.
Colin Sibun is the director of the Army Museums Ogilby Trust
No: Given that the most likely trigger for this question is the 60th anniversary of the end of the second world war and the attendant VE/VJ Day commemorations, it may be premature to provide an answer in advance of the national events planned for July.
However, in more general terms the suggestion that war is a suitable subject for nostalgia is easily refuted. There is no place for sentimental glorification when dealing with the horrors of the battlefield; the challenge for museums is to portray those horrors in an acceptable way to visitors more familiar with the romanticism of the cinema than the harsh reality of warfare.
Equally, it is true that wartime hardships experienced by servicemen and civilians alike create lasting bonds that we should be loath to forget or belittle.
Such a balance is not easily achieved, but those national museums most closely associated with military history and the 150 regimental and corps museums scattered across the UK provide an invaluable insight into the waste, cruelty and suffering of war, as well as the extraordinary acts of valour and self-sacrifice that it inspires.
The 60th anniversary provides an opportunity to remember a critical period in our nation's history and to honour a generation that endured almost incomprehensible suffering. But nostalgia for the bestiality of war? A definite no.
Yes: The war has become too much of a comfort zone for museums. It's so easy to 'do' because it has all the ingredients that guarantee success: great stories, real people, distinctive objects, television back-up, sentiment, danger and a happy ending.
Part of the comfort zone is the all-pervasive notion that the second world war was, above all, 'the people's war' and that personal memories are the best way of understanding it.
This is understandable, but too much reminiscence about the same sort of experience can lead to empathy fatigue. It can also reduce the war to just another 'how we used to live' episode: like the Victorians, but with gas masks.
Shouldn't we be trying harder to use the personal memory approach to tell some different, and perhaps less comfortable, stories? Ones that remember, for example, the ugly bits of the national psyche that emerged from war alongside the admirable. This would also enrich the citizenship learning that war is said to be good for.
Less nostalgia might also mean more space for other events of the 1940s, such as Indian independence. Winning the war and losing the Empire were tied up with each other and the various anniversaries provide a great opportunity for museums to develop a broader repertoire of stories - if we can get out of our comfort zone.
Colin Sibun is the director of the Army Museums Ogilby Trust
No: Given that the most likely trigger for this question is the 60th anniversary of the end of the second world war and the attendant VE/VJ Day commemorations, it may be premature to provide an answer in advance of the national events planned for July.
However, in more general terms the suggestion that war is a suitable subject for nostalgia is easily refuted. There is no place for sentimental glorification when dealing with the horrors of the battlefield; the challenge for museums is to portray those horrors in an acceptable way to visitors more familiar with the romanticism of the cinema than the harsh reality of warfare.
Equally, it is true that wartime hardships experienced by servicemen and civilians alike create lasting bonds that we should be loath to forget or belittle.
Such a balance is not easily achieved, but those national museums most closely associated with military history and the 150 regimental and corps museums scattered across the UK provide an invaluable insight into the waste, cruelty and suffering of war, as well as the extraordinary acts of valour and self-sacrifice that it inspires.
The 60th anniversary provides an opportunity to remember a critical period in our nation's history and to honour a generation that endured almost incomprehensible suffering. But nostalgia for the bestiality of war? A definite no.
