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On a cold, blustery day in February I attended a meeting of the Official Waterloo Committee at the National Army Museum in Chelsea. Yes, hard on the heels of the Nelson bicentenaries, the Wellington machine is gearing up to celebrate this famous soldier’s military career, notably his campaigns in the Iberian Peninsula 1808–1814, and its culmination at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
Will a ‘Wellington Festival’ overshadow the memory of Nelson? Some of you will recall that during the Club’s Cecil Isaacson Memorial lecture last year, Commander Pongo Blanchford highlighted how, after his state funeral, mention of Nelson in the newspapers fell away almost entirely. Events in the Napoleonic Empire were far more significant, and worrying. Will Nelson’s memory fade 200 years later in the same way?
