Norah Baker: “Oh I do, yes, it is a very good symbol yes.” Interviewer: “So, do you think the poppy is a good symbol?” Norah Barker: “It is very poor agricultural land all the way along and I can remember the fields more or less red with poppies than anything else. Interviewer: “Am I right in thinking that area would have had a lot of poppies?” And they were everywhere, there was a huge profusion of them in the Western Front so they would have been something that soldiers saw very commonly.” Laura Clouting: “So the red poppy has arguably become the most enduring symbol of Remembrance and really that is linked to I suppose what we could call a botanical phenomenon uh because poppies provided this kind of shocking burst of plant life in very otherwise bleak landscapes on the Western Front and that really was helped along actually by the fact that modern weaponry, particularly artillery basically pulverised the soil and high explosive shells actually had quite a surprisingly generative effect and they basically created the perfect conditions in which this, the red poppy could grow. So, what is it about the poppy that captured the public imagination so profoundly? Why do some people see the poppy as a controversial symbol? And how was the poppy chosen in the first place? These evocative displays demonstrate the resounding popularity of the poppy over 100 years since the end of the First World War. This year the poppy sculptures are being installed at IWM North. Nearly 10 million people saw this display in total. Two parts of this installation later went on tour around the UK to 19 different locations before ending up at IWM London in 2018. In 2014, 800,000 ceramic copies designed by Paul Cummings and Tom Piper went on display at the Tower of London.
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