THE BEST OF BRITISH (AND GERMAN, RUSSIAN, HUNGARIAN AND CZECH...)
GETTY IMAGES/PA IMAGES/ESTATE OF ABRAM GAMES AND TRANSPORT FOR LONDON
“Dear land, dear land, our roots are deep in you: May your sons, may your sons grow tall and true!” If any verse captures the national pride that coursed through the Festival of Britain – which opened 70 years ago this month and dominated the nation’s cultural landscape throughout the summer of 1951 – then this official poem, penned as an ode to the exhibition, is surely it.
The Festival of Britain was the nation’s bid to show off its best side to a watching world – and, more to the point, to its own people. Marking the centenary of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (staged at a time when British imperial power was approaching its zenith), the festival was hailed as a celebration of “the arts of peace” a few short years after the trauma of the Second World War. Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s Labour administration also saw it as an opportunity to promote Britain as a model democracy at a time when relations between east and west were increasingly strained.
That this five-month evocation of British exceptionalism struck a chord with the public is beyond doubt. It’s estimated that one in three Britons visited one of the exhibitions staged that summer – and that
