For victories that left Britain little damaged, great memorials were built, considering their limited finances, while for the two great victories in the 20th century, Britain was crippled for decades (it never did recover from WWI, and took decades to recover from WWII). This was then exacerbated by the great move to the Left that was more interested in class war than in memorializing the dead of the aristocratic struggles of the Wars. So the memorials for the recent conflicts seem understated.

For people who know the history of London and Britain, there are many stupendous memorials on an immensely grand scale. Trafalgar Square, with its anything but life size sculpture of Nelson; Admiralty Arch, memorializing Queen Victoria and acting as a gate between The Mall and Trafalgar Square; Victoria Memorial, the large white and gold circular sculpture in front of Buckingham Palace; Constitution Arch/Wellington Arch, celebrating the Duke of Wellington at the end of Constitution Hill between Hyde Park and the grounds of Buckingham Palace; and The Monument, 202 foot column in The City memorializing the Great Fire.

The Monument, while on a stupendous scale itself, is but one small part of the memorial to the fire. Christopher Wren was commissioned to build 50 parish churches, which are widely celebrated for their elegance and artistry, along with building St. Paul’s from the rubble of Old St. Paul’s. Few of the Wren churches survive, thanks to the bombings of WWII, and one who doesn’t know their provenance or that of St. Paul’s would likely dismiss the majesty and drama of memorials in London.

The one great memorial in London that demonstrates the bathos that it is capable of is the wretched memorial to Diana. It is rather a monument to the short term power of Earl Spencer and Mohammed Fayed that forced through an ugly, ill-conceived, over grand memorial on the grounds of Hyde Park.

Just a bit of pedantry to highlight that while the WWI and II memorials are very reserved and understated, this is not the typical style of London.

As to what would be an appropriate memorial to 9/11: something glorious, martial, imposing. $1B seems a bit much, especially for an excercise in negation. A rather appropriate memorial would be a series of 911 foot tall flagpoles permanent US bases in Kandahar, Riyadh, Jeddah, Gezirah (Sudan), Jalalabad, Waziristan, and all of the hometowns of the 19 attackers. A “Memorial Forward” approach that is rather more Imperial than the US is now taking. But I have a rather Roman attitude to these sorts of things.

Hmmmmm.

I had the honor of visiting each with a former student, and retired military veteran, who simply pointed out that he knew many of the men whose names were on the former memorial, and had served with some of them.

And don’t think they celebrate death, but life.

A memorial should be just that, a place to reflect and remember. Move the freedom museum somewhere else, it has little to do with what happened here.

See the wikipedia entry for “World Trade Center Memorial” to see the image.

I think part of this memorial fever is the impact that the Vietnam Memorial - the Wall - had on us emotionally. Everyone who sees that FEELS it so strongly that now we want to somehow duplicate that emotional impact for every tragedy.

We want to substitute the stimulation of emotions for genuine emotion - this is our curse as a modern society that has everything filtered and sorted for us. Is it worth over a billion dollars to stir up our emotions? This memorial isn’t really about memorializing anything. It is a theme park of death.

in terms of scale, I just think that the WTC memorial should have some humility about its aesthetics in the light of other genocidal world events such as srebrenica, rwanda, hiroshima, darfur … and perhaps one could mention the erasure of Fallujah from the face of the earth…? The point for me is about showing insight into the wider context…

the irish hunger memorial is stunning however - totally arresting and moving in that context of harsh concrete, sheet glass and tower blocks. If only the English would have the humility to acknowledge their role in the irish famine genocide. but that’s the trouble with empire - can’t seem to acknowledge its damage to others, only its own glory or its own fallen.

have a look at http://www.remembersarowiwa.com for a project addressing these issues

The survivors put up this marker in a Queens cemetary:
http://www.general-slocum.com/0photogallerych10.htm

Seems about the right size to me. Why the families of the victims have been able to take over the entire issue of the rebuilding of the site is beyond me. It is not “hallowed ground” or a “cemetery”. It is the site of a disaster which has now been cleaned up. I don’t want to appear heartless, but they really don’t have any special “standing”. What happens at the site should be a matter of interest to the general public and not influenced by the emotions of the distraught families.