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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Paul Owen

What would the Tower of London poppy exhibition look like if it included the global dead of world war one?

Credit: Quakers in Britain

The hugely popular Tower of London art installation Blood Swept Lands and Sea of Red by Paul Cummins and Tom Piper features 888,246 ceramic poppies – one for each of the British fatalities of the first world war. The poppies fill the moat of the Tower.

But how much of London would the exhibition fill if it depicted the total number of people from every country killed in the war – soldiers and civilians, allies and enemies – as opposed to the UK dead?

The Quakers have created this map to answer that question, and it shows 19.5m poppies flowing out of the Tower along both banks of the Thames as far south-west as Millbank, snaking around parliament and up the Mall to Buckingham Palace.

WWI Deaths - Google Map.Read more: http://www.quaker.org.uk/ww1map
The Quaker map. Photograph: Quakers/Google
WWI Deaths - Google Map.Read more: http://www.quaker.org.uk/ww1map
Detail from the map, around the Torwer of London. Photograph: Quakers/Google
London, UK An aerial view from The Shard of visitors looking at Tower of London's 'Blood swept Lands and Seas of Red' poppy installation by artist Paul Cummins at the Tower of London
An aerial view from the Shard of visitors to the Tower of London poppy installation. Photograph: Hannah Mckay/EPA
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