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The sea of poppies at the Tower of London, designed by Paul Cummins, has so captured the public's imagination that all of the over 800,000 ceramic stems have now been sold raising over £11mill for military charities. It strikes a chord for me in a number of ways.
Several years ago, as Acting Head of Marketing for Historic Royal Palaces, I spent a year based at the Tower of London and every day walked from Tower Hill tube station and around the moat to the main entrance gate, to be greeted by stern Yeoman Warders. The deep and wide moat space creates a sense of 'otherness' and distance between the outside world and daily business of life in the inner world of the Tower. Over the years I've seen the moat more frequently used, hosting event marquees, costumed pageants and of course, an ice rink, but this latest installation is quite something.
More recently, my marketing work for The Poppy Factory in Richmond also makes a links.Every year over 25 million poppies are made at the Factory and sold to The Royal British Legion for their Poppy Appeal. Not only creating jobs for wounded, injured and sick veterans at Richmond, the sales proceeds contribute to more employment opportunities for veterans in many different organisations way beyond Richmond. This year the Tower's installation provides both an individual and collective platform for wartime remembrance concentrated on that one single London location, complementing the mobile network of single poppies pinned to coats, hats and jackets all across the country.
However I do agree to some extent with Jonathan Jones who wrote in the Guardian this week that the Tower's work of art should show more of the horror of war and 'not sweep the grisly facts under a red carpet of artificial flowers'. And yes, it does only commemorate the British victims of WWI and not the French, Russians nor Germans who also died in their millions. But surely, for all of that, the evident poignancy of the work and the quiet contemplation of the thousands of visitors to the Tower over the past few weeks must surely count for some measure of raised awareness and understanding of the human tragedy of war.
