We went to the exhibition Treason: People, Power & Plot at the National Archives in Kew. Last year we saw their exhibition about the 1920s.
Some other items near the main entrance:
Treason:
There is a video show:
Walking around the chronology:
The People’s choice:
What you can get in the gift shop:
What I got:
And the very latest British History Ruler, with all the rulers up to and including Charles III:
Unless I missed it I don’t think there was any mention of Rebecca West’s The Meaning Of Treason. Peterloo, Chartism and the Cato Street Conspiracy were all mentioned in British school textbooks at least as early as the 1970s, but I admit I didn’t know much about Sharpe’s Rebellion, even though Wordsworth’s poem for Toussaint L’Ouverture is anthologised. The Easter Rising really ought to be general knowledge amongst all British adults but probably hasn’t been for a very long time, if it ever was.
I don’t know whether this proves I’m in “the new Elite”, but I think it’s a positive aspect of Britain that we’re ready to put the negative stories of our history in the official exhibitions. I also realise that some other people – maybe American left-wingers looking at this by accident – would think that it’s just liberal cant that doesn’t want to go on to talk about hard issues, either reparations for the past or structural reform in the present, and so on. You are all absolutely correct, but I can’t please everybody all at once. Here are the geese:
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