What the UK’s ‘day of reflection’ reveals about COVID memory

By David Tollerton, Associate Professor, Memory Studies, University of Exeter

A couple of years ago I dug up an artefact buried under soil, grass and leaves in a park close to my home in Exeter. It was not some ancient object but rather a granite memorial plaque laid down by the local city council only three years before. Dedicated to regional victims of the COVID pandemic, it had been created, forgotten and swallowed by the ground in swift succession.

This illustrates our conflicted relationship with remembering the pandemic in Britain. The urge to memorialise sits awkwardly alongside forces of forgetting and indifference. COVID…

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