During times of crisis, nations need their myths; they crave stories from the past that give hope that they will prevail over whatever disaster now faces them.
During the second world war, in the aftermath of Dunkirk, Britons comforted themselves with stories of how they had “stood alone” before, during the Napoleonic Wars, and still emerged victorious. To further boost morale the Ministry of Information even helped transform Shakespeare’s Henry V into a glossy movie starring Laurence Olivier. At the Battle of Agincourt, against all the odds, a few English archers defeated heavily armoured French knights.
Today the UK is once again, according to prime minister Boris Johnson, at war, but this time against a new kind of enemy: coronavirus. And, despite the unprecedented nature of the current crisis many Britons — of a certain age at least — are using the past to inspire them. Dame Vera Lynn, now 103, is not alone in invoking the spirit of the Blitz “when we all pulled together and looked after each other”.