The victims of the 1918 Spanish flu have been far from forgotten on the centenary of this deadly period in 20th-century history (A century on, why are we forgetting the deaths of 100 million?, 25 May). Commemoration coverage will appear in autumn 2018, coinciding with the centenary of the most deadly wave of the virus. The range of Spanish flu programming airing later this year includes BBC television, BBC radio, and a podcast series, Going Viral. Exhibitions will open at the Florence Nightingale Museum in London and Torquay Museum in Devon, and a contemporary dance piece, Contagion, will tour. This in the UK alone.
Further afield, institutions such as the Smithsonian in the US are commemorating the pandemic. Centenary commemoration is also happening at a grassroots level, including a new memorial in Regina, Canada, and a community history group in Wellington, New Zealand. My own PhD research, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, scrutinises the marked attention that the Spanish flu is now receiving in its centenary year. This “forgotten” pandemic is being thoroughly remembered.
Hannah Mawdsley
Queen Mary University of London, and Imperial War Museum
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