That Splendid Enclosure

This chapter describes how the spirit of commemoration of those killed in the Great War, which became such a hallmark of national culture in the years ahead, always remained overwhelmingly Southern and Greek. What was involved was not just aesthetic in a purely artistic sense. The legacy of physical disfigurement from war service was one prime reason why consciousness of beauty was habitual in society at large. Simplicity, minimalism, and the whiteness of marble were inherent in this rejuvenation of classical principles. For instance, the bare austerity of Edwin Lutyens's Cenotaph in Whitehall, erected in 1920, drew upon ancient Greek tombs at Xanthos. In her 1925 volume of essays, The Common Reader, Virginia Woolf captured essential elements in this national mood during the first years after the war by relating the British condition to the ancient Greek mind.