Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red
Ceramic artist Paul Cummins' novel art work at the Tower of London has certainly attracted the crowds today.
Standing seven or eight deep, hundreds of people can be seen above looking at the sea of ceramic poppies in the Tower's moat and recording them. I visited the site twice today, separated by three hours, and the scenes were the same on both occasions. When I left, there were policemen standing in the road on Tower Hill (that's under the trees in the photo), trying to keep the crowds on the pavement! Watching the crowd's movements, it was clear that a large number had only come to see the installation and were not going to/from a visit to the Tower itself.
The art installation was opened on 5 August and eventually 888,246 ceramic poppies will be planted, the last being added on Armistice Day, 11 November. Each poppy represents a British military fatality from the First World War, including colonial forces (Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa as well as the rest of what became the Commonwealth).
British nationals killed in the First World War totalled 589,908, according to the War Office's 1922 publication "Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War, 1914-1920."
Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red
Ceramic artist Paul Cummins' novel art work at the Tower of London has certainly attracted the crowds today.
Standing seven or eight deep, hundreds of people can be seen above looking at the sea of ceramic poppies in the Tower's moat and recording them. I visited the site twice today, separated by three hours, and the scenes were the same on both occasions. When I left, there were policemen standing in the road on Tower Hill (that's under the trees in the photo), trying to keep the crowds on the pavement! Watching the crowd's movements, it was clear that a large number had only come to see the installation and were not going to/from a visit to the Tower itself.
The art installation was opened on 5 August and eventually 888,246 ceramic poppies will be planted, the last being added on Armistice Day, 11 November. Each poppy represents a British military fatality from the First World War, including colonial forces (Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa as well as the rest of what became the Commonwealth).
British nationals killed in the First World War totalled 589,908, according to the War Office's 1922 publication "Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War, 1914-1920."