Disillusionment was inevitable; after the twenties came the depression thirties and then another war. And things were different after that one. No new memorials emerged triumphantly, defiantly, hopefully out of the mushroom cloud of World War Two. Hope perished in the gas chambers of Poland. A new generation of the battle-damaged were blown home and a second set of names chiselled onto the bases of existing statues; sons below fathers. And in everybody’s mind, the weary knowledge that some day young men would once again be falling. Wars make history seem deceptively simple. They provide clear turning points, easy distinctions: before and after, winner and loser, right and wrong. True history, the past, is not like that. It isn’t flat or linear. It has no outline. It is slippery, like liquid; infinite and unknowable, like space. And it is changeable: just when you think you see a pattern, perspective shifts, an alternative version is proffered, a long-forgotten memory resurfaces.
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In real life turning points are sneaky. They pass by unlabelled and unheeded. Opportunities are missed, catastrophes unwittingly celebrated. Turning points are only uncovered later, by historians who seek to bring order to a lifetime of tangled moments.
Kate Morton, The House at Riverton