Patriotism and pageantry: representations of Britain’s naval past at the Greenwich Night Pageant, 1933

Abstract

This chapter explores how ideas and images of Britain’s Naval past were represented by the historian Arthur Bryant and the president of the Royal Naval College, Admiral Barry Domvile, at the Greenwich Night Pageant in June 1933. Bryant sought to revitalise the present by romanticizing the past, motivated by his desire to raise awareness of Britain’s past glories to halt a perceived decline in patriotism during the interwar period. Using material sourced from a range of archives, including the National Maritime Museum, the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives and the National Archives, this article will show how representations of Britain’s naval heritage was utilised in debates about the nature of British identity in an era of imperial decline and an increasingly volatile international situation in the period before the Second World War.