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The Cenotaph

The Cenotaph (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

• Featured article candidates/The Cenotaph/archive1

Nominator(s): HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:46, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

This article is the culmination of a project I've been working on (on and off, with quite a few digressions!) for about six years, starting with Northampton War Memorial, which passed FAC back in 2016. It documents the history of what is easily Britain's most famous war memorial, and probably one of the most famous war memorials anywhere. It was never intended to be such. It started life in wood and plaster as one of a collection of monuments for the parade to celebrate the formal end of the First World War, but it caught the imagination of a public mourning the loss of an entire generation of men in a way that nothing before or since ever has. The industrial-scale slaughter had never been seen before, and most of the dead (or what was left of them) were buried overseas. People needed somewhere to grieve, and the Cenotaph gave them that. It was rebuilt almost unchanged and in the same spot in stone, where it has stood for over a century and is still revered today.

I've largely rewritten and expanded it from the ground up over the course of a couple of years, and slowly accumulated just about every piece of literature which covers it in detail. I'm indebted to Carcharoth for his help and advice throughout the process, and to Tim riley for a very thorough GA review, and now I think it's ready for its star. Thank you, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:46, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Image review

• Suggest scaling up the sketch
  • Happy to do so if you can explain how
    • Add |upright=X, where X is how much you want to scale it relative to user preferences. For example, if you have a default image size set of 200px, |upright=1.1 will make the image look like it's 220px for you. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:19, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
• Suggest adding alt text
  • Done, except for the gallery in the bottom where I'm not sure I could add anything that's helpful and not overly repetitive.
• File:Greek_Parade_Paris_1919.jpg needs a US PD tag and author date of death. Ditto File:Monk-97672_-_The_Temporary_Cenotaph,_Whitehall.jpg
  • Unable to find a date of death for the first but suspecting it may be more recent than 70 years; image removed. Date and US tag added for the second.
• File:Cenotaph_sketch_by_Lutyens.jpg needs a US tag. Ditto File:The_Cenotaph_the_Morning_of_the_Peace_Procession_by_Sir_William_Nicholson.jpg, File:Reverse_of_Armistice_Day_Memorial_Medal_1928.jpg
  • Done.
    • Where and when was the first two of these first published? For the last, the image description gives a date of 1928, but the tag indicates published pre-1927? Nikkimaria (talk) 01:19, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
• Can you elaborate on why File:Immortal_Shrine_(Will_Longstaff).jpg is believed to be PD in the US?
  • The AWM states that it's in the public domain; that's all the information I have.
    • Okay - I would expect the AWM declaration to apply to status in Australia rather than US. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:19, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
• File:British_Empire_1897.jpg: source link is dead, missing US tag, and if the author is unknown how do we know they died over 70 years ago? Nikkimaria (talk) 02:44, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
  • This is transcluded from a template. I have no idea what it's provenance is but it's used in thousands of places on enwiki and elsewhere. That said, I'm not convinced of the value of the template in the first place so I've removed it. @Nikkimaria: HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:28, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Support from Tim riley

When reviewing the article for GAN I commented that it struck me as of FA standard, and revisiting it confirms my view. The article is highly readable (nearly 7,000 words, but it didn't seem that long even at a fourth perusal, just now), in impeccable prose, comprehensive as far as I can judge, balanced, well proportioned and well and widely referenced. I don't see any aspect that requires improvement, and the article seems to me to meet all the FA criteria. – Tim riley talk 07:41, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Comments by Z1720

Non-expert prose review:

• Just from loading the page, I find that the lede is quite long, with four large paragraphs. I won't oppose because of this, since I think it is still within MOS:LEDELENGTH but I do recommend that you take a look at the lede and consider removing or summarising some information, especially if other reviewers note the same concern.
• "...with the repatriation of the Unknown Warrior an unidentified British serviceman exhumed from France..." Place a comma after Warrior
• "The memorial met with public acclaim and has been largely praised by academics and has sometimes been compared to other famous war memorials," -> "The memorial met with public acclaim, has been largely praised by academics and has sometimes been compared to other famous war memorials" This new version replaced the first "and" with a comma.
• Note a might need a citation.
• Optional: MOS:NOTES says that, "Usually, if the sections are separated, then explanatory footnotes are listed first, short citations or other footnoted citations are next, and any full citations or general references are listed last." This article has the long references listed first, then the short citations, which is outside the norm. Consider switching the order.
• The infobox says the cenotaph was designated a listed building on 5 February 1970, but the article only has the year listed. The full date should be added to the article text so that this information is cited somewhere, or removed from the infobox if the date cannot be verified.

Those are my thoughts after reading the article. Please ping me when the above are addressed. Z1720 (talk) 02:23, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Comment by Carcharoth

Just a brief set of comments, as I have mainly been watching the excellent work being done on this article.

I think one area that might be 'missing' from the Later History section is something on how the Cenotaph features (due to its location) as part of the landscape for other ceremonial events in and around Whitehall, parliament and Westminster Abbey, and how state funerals (and ceremonial funerals) that pass the Cenotaph (usually but not always en route to Westminster Abbey) feature salutes to the Cenotaph. It may not be possible to add anything, as it is possible that no-one has commented on this, but it clearly does happen. See the accounts of the funeral procession for Douglas Haig in 1928, the death and state funeral of George VI in 1952, the death and state funeral of Winston Churchill in 1965, and a few others as well. I was hoping to find a source that gave a traditional route for such events, but drew a blank.

On the replicas or close copies, it may be worth checking the Alex King reference again as there is a recent article (2020) here that states Lutyens' Cenotaph was "broadly imitated and referenced in a number of First World War Memorials erected during the 1920s, including those in Leeds, Glasgow, and Stoke-on-Trent", referencing King pp.140-150. Carcharoth (talk) 20:16, 16 April 2022 (UTC)