About the progress of The Dunkirk Project: today 26th May is the first day of the nine-day River of Stories on my online installation at http://thedunkirkproject.wordpress.com. Each day I’m telling some of the stories, more or less as they happened 70 years ago. These stories are all from my research notebooks, and all went into the making of Thames to Dunkirk. I’ve already received some brilliant contributions from people telling family stories – I’m hoping to hear more from women who had to wait and worry, or indeed served themselves, or from people who feel strongly that it affected their lives in some way, or have views on the consequences and aftermath of Dunkirk. These will help us to re-evaluate the phenomenon, how a shared event becomes a national myth, and what we can learn from it. During the month I was making Thames to Dunkirk, 94 British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. I think we can’t afford to think of history as in the past; we have this huge collective experience and memory at our disposal, and we need to consider its significance, as well as preserve the archive. I’ve already had some interesting responses (either emailed to me at [email protected], or via The Dunkirk Project on the BBC website history message board (at www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbhistory) or as comments direct to the River of Stories (at http://thedunkirkproject.wordpress.com). Please do contribute if you’d like to.
