The Cenotaph stands in the middle of Whitehall, a plain white Portland stone monument carrying no religious symbol, no figure and almost no text — only the words “The Glorious Dead” and the dates of the two world wars.
It is the focus of Britain’s national remembrance, and its power comes almost entirely from what was left out.
The temporary one
It was never meant to be permanent. For the victory parade of July 1919, the government asked Sir Edwin Lutyens for a saluting point, and he produced a design in a matter of hours. It was built in wood and plaster as a temporary structure.
The public response was overwhelming. Over a million people visited within a week, and the base was buried in flowers. The pressure to make it permanent was immediate and irresistible, and the stone version was unveiled by George V on 11 November 1920, the second anniversary of the armistice.
Empty on purpose
Cenotaph is Greek for empty tomb, and the emptiness is the point. Around a million British and Empire servicemen died in the First World War, and the great majority were buried where they fell — the government had decided against repatriating bodies. Families had no grave to visit.
Lutyens gave them a tomb that was deliberately empty, standing for every one of the missing at once.
He also refused religious iconography. There is no cross, and the inscription names no god. This was contested at the time and was defended on the grounds that the dead included Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and Jews from across the Empire, and that the monument had to hold all of them.
The geometry
The most remarkable technical thing about it, and invisible unless you are told. The Cenotaph has almost no straight lines and no true verticals.
Lutyens used entasis, the subtle curvature the Greeks applied to temple columns. The vertical surfaces are inclined so that, extended upward, they would meet at a point around 300 metres above the monument. The horizontal surfaces are arcs of a circle whose centre lies nearly 300 metres below ground.
The effect is that it reads as perfectly straight and still to the eye, while feeling subtly alive. It is one of the most sophisticated pieces of design in London and looks, at a glance, like a plain block.
Remembrance Sunday
The national ceremony is held here each year on the Sunday nearest 11 November. The King, senior royals, the prime minister, party leaders, high commissioners and service chiefs lay wreaths; two minutes’ silence is kept at eleven o’clock, marked by a gun; and several thousand veterans march past afterwards.
It is broadcast live and watched by millions, and it is among the few remaining occasions on which the country does the same thing at the same moment. See Remembrance Day.
The others
Lutyens’ design was copied across the Empire — cenotaphs modelled on it stand in Auckland, Hong Kong, Toronto, Bermuda and elsewhere. He also designed the enormous Thiepval Memorial on the Somme, carrying the names of over 72,000 men with no known grave.
Passing traffic in Whitehall was once expected to stop and men to remove their hats. That has gone, but a considerable number of people still nod or pause as they walk past, which is a small thing and easy to miss.