After a very long time in gestation, the central memorial to the missing of the Somme, the Thiepval Memorial, was finally unveiled on Monday 1 August 1932. Despite the presence of the French President and the Prince of Wales, and despite the display of military glory by detachments of the French and British armies, a Monday unveiling on a far from blazing summer day meant that Sir Edwin Lutyens’s sublime masterpiece was presented to the world in a rather low-key manner. Thiepval was complete, but unlike Blomfield’s Menin Gate in the heart of bustling Ypres with its nightly Last Post ceremony, this was a memorial a long way from the pulse of life, and interpreting its form and symbolism was far more of a challenge than with Blomfield’s rich classicism.
In addition, the memorial was unveiled after the release of All Quiet on the Western Front and in the wake of the Wall Street Crash and the unleashing of economic depression on Britain. Many were asking was the war even worth it, and, if not, perhaps commemoration was an empty, meaningless gesture. Such an atmosphere made it hard for the memorial to grip the imagination at its unveiling.
However, the scale of Lutyens’s achievement at Thiepval is stupefying. It is utterly impossible to summarise the effect of the memorial other than to say that the complexity of its geometry and inter-relationships of spaces creates an overwhelming effect on the senses. In his 1946 book, War Memorials, Arnold Whittick attempted to get to the heart of it: ‘It is a daring and imaginative conception which dominates the scene; and there is in this arch towering above the Somme battlefield an expression of aspiration associated with grandeur and power which, to those who have seen it, is an unforgettable spectacle.
No memorial arch of the ancient or modern world has such beauty of proportion or conveys in a monumental form such an impression of inspired achievement.’ What the perfection of Whittick’s text cannot do is impart the sheer impact of viewing the memorial, of being in its shadow, of standing underneath its arches, of moving around, across and through it, of having the sensation that the names of the 73,000 are both ascending up into the heavens while also pouring down on top of you. Its brick and stone verticals, horizontals, straight lines, and curves flow and merge simultaneously, enwrapping and releasing the visitor. The Thiepval Memorial is bulk and mass. It is also as light and delicate as a butterfly, and it has never, ever failed to fill me with wonder.
Let’s visit it together, and if you’d like a curtain raiser, do have a look at the film I made with my friend, Ross Barnwell, on this most fabulous of memorials.
