Lord Ashcroft, who has given his name to a new gallery at the Imperial War Museum (IWM), is nothing if not controversial. His media coverage is so extensive that Google recommends options for refining online searches about him.
These include references to his millions; news reports about him; the BBC; tax; his relationship with the Turks and Caicos Islands; and his yacht.
But, whatever the weight of those concerns, both Google and Ashcroft’s own website attest to the importance that he attaches to the Lord Ashcroft Gallery and to his medal collection.
His publications are dominated by monographs on bravery and the medals awarded for it – Special Forces Heroes, Victoria Cross (VC) Heroes, and George Cross (GC) Heroes – and he is currently presenting a series on the latter on the Discovery Channel.
So, what’s the story? Ashcroft is an ex-deputy chairman of the Conservative Party and treasurer of the International Democrat Union, a centre-right international grouping of conservative, Christian-democratic and liberal-conservative political parties.
Why should this entrepreneur and politician be so passionate about danger and heroism? And what prompted him to build up a collection of VCs, estimated to be worth more than £30m?
Bravest of the brave
Ashcroft was inspired by his father’s actions during the Normandy landings. He believes that the country owes an enormous debt of gratitude to its heroes. According to an interview linked to the IWM website, when he held the first VC that he bought, he felt a surge of pride on reading the citation that told the story of its holder.
“I wanted more,” said Ashcroft. “I set my heart upon building a formidable collection.” He now owns 164 VCs, the largest private collection in the world, and describes them as “simply, my pride and joy”.
This is what informed the basis of the IWM’s new exhibition, in which Ashcroft’s collection is displayed alongside the 48 VCs and 31 GCs, the civilian equivalent of the former medal, held by the IWM.
At one level, Ashcroft’s involvement is an exemplary model of the kind of philanthropy that the coalition government is currently trying to encourage. He not only donated £5m to build the gallery but, as a trustee of the new Imperial War Museum Foundation, is working to establish a fundraising strategy and generate money for the museum’s development plans.
But Extraordinary Heroes represents another kind of model. While it’s evidently recognised as a major event in the world of numismatics, the exhibition is also significant to those of us who would never bother making a special effort to look at a display of medals.
Despite being its central focus, Extraordinary Heroes is a long way off being just about the VC and the GC. It’s about what the medals represent and, as such, it’s a fascinating example of how museums can bring life to what might otherwise be perceived as unforthcoming, objects of material culture. Maybe this is the new numismatics.
For Ashcroft, the medals speak for themselves: “From time to time, I like to sit quietly and look at the medals, thinking of the valour their recipients displayed.” But, as Medal News observed, not everybody “looks at things as we do”. Some of us need more help in understanding how the VC and the GC represent the gold standard of bravery – the “bravest of the brave”.
Courage, hot and cold
The exhibition clearly contributes to the IWM’s mission, currently articulated as exploring how the history of modern conflict affects us all, from the frontline to the home front.
Extraordinary Heroes is arranged according to qualities associated with courage: boldness, aggression, leadership, skill, sacrifice, initiative and endurance. Each section delves into the life stories and tales of the bravery of featured recipients, from the time of the Crimean war to the present.
Even within those themes, different kinds of courage are represented – spur-of-the-moment bravery and instances of hot courage; and the cool and sustained bravery of, say, bomb-disposal experts.
The narratives of those, whom in the face of extreme situations did extraordinary things, are compelling enough. Their stories are reinforced by additional information, provided via interactive touchscreens, animated graphic novels, sound clips and objects.
Objects on display include the diving suit that Acting Leading Seaman James Magennis wore in 1945 when he attached magnetic mines to the Japanese cruiser Takao; a pill box containing a needle, cotton, and a broken razor blade – the only possessions of French resistance fighter Odette Sansom; and a postcard celebrating Lieutenant Leefe Robinson’s 1916 destruction of a German airship on a night-time raid over London.
Educational link
While these objects provide a tangible link to the events being narrated, they’re inevitably somewhat macabre. Although the messages of the exhibition might appear to be clear, Extraordinary Heroes is highly discursive.
The introductory screens cover the history and manufacture of the VC and GC medals on the one hand. They also feature a range of talking heads who reflect on the concepts of bravery and courage from a multiplicity of perspectives – personal, psychological, sociological, religious and naive.
Ashcroft himself appears, but is no more privileged than the local teenagers from Street Genius, who were involved in a project organised by the IWM and BBC 21st-Century Classroom website in the run-up to the exhibition.
Unlike many museums, who keep the work of their learning programmes well hidden, the work of these participants is integrated into the exhibition - not least in depictions of the stories of heroes such as Private Johnson Beharry, who moved his column out of an ambush and carried wounded comrades to safety in Iraq in 2004, and Matt Croucher, a Royal Marine reservist, who threw himself on an exploding grenade to protect his comrades in Afghanistan in 2008.
If the texture of Extraordinary Heroes varies, so does the tone of the interpretation. Some of the captions are written as you might expect – objective, historical accounts alongside oral histories and old news clips. Elsewhere, the museum imports a style derived from graphic novels, whose subject matter typically focuses on derring-do.
Although the exhibition often describes deaths and willful self-sacrifice, it ultimately offers a picture of the courage that many humans are capable of. Our greatest sadness must be in respect of the trauma, unhappiness and, sometimes, poverty that affects some of these extraordinary heroes after being awarded their medals.
Sara Selwood is a museum consultant
Funder Lord Ashcroft
Exhibition design Casson Mann
Graphic design Graphic Thought Facility
Lighting design DHA Design
Structural engineer Eckersley O’Callaghan
Digital interactives Clay Interactive (Everybody’s Story & Portrait Screens), ISO (Journey Interactive), Spiral (Introduction)
Specialist LED light bars Schott
