Read The Great Silence Online
Authors: Juliet Nicolson
Below right:Crowds came to see a spectacular show celebrating the achievements of the wartime hero Lawrence of Arabia, packing the seats of the Albert Hall during the summer of 1919
Right:Sir Edwin Lutyens dashed off an early sketch for his friend Lady Sackville to show her his idea for a temporary memorial to the dead of the Great War
Below:The Great Silence: Piccadilly Circus, 11 November 1919. Families huddled at the edge of the pavement, poised to dash across the street, a window cleaner steadied his ladder and the violet-seller fell silent. Over them all, the elegant stone wings of Eros were as ever frozen in motion. The only sound was the splash of the fountain
Above:Pam Parish aged three with her mother Ethel in 1919. On 11 November 1919 she fell to her knees to observe the first two-minute silence in tribute to those who had died in the war
Above left:Tommy Atkins and his fiancée Kitty were reunited after the war when he became a meter reader for Hackney Electric, disillusioned with his pre-war work as an under-chauffeur and disappointed by the lack of adventure and ‘ooh la la’ that he had hoped to find in France
Left:Doris Scovell, cook, and Will Titley, footman, had fallen in love ‘below stairs’ and treasured their days off together at the Brighton seaside
Below:The six sisters of an only brother Tom Mitford (here shown as a schoolboy at Lockers Park Prep School) found it impossible to refuse him anything