Monumental Lies & The Material Evidence of the Past

7th Annual Heritage Lecture

Robert Bevan

Author and Journalist

The Lecture was given on Thursday 15th February at Jesus College, Cambridge. 

A recording of the lecture can be found on our Resources Page

About the lecture

The past is weaponised in culture wars and the city is cynically edited by those who wish to impose their ideology upon the physi- cal spaces around us. This is not just about statues of slavers or colonialists; Holocaust deniers, for example misuse details of the ruins of the gas chambers at Auschwitz to promote their ‘no holes; no Holocaust’ lies. To guard against this manipulation, the preservation of the material evidence of history is crucial. Yet longstanding concepts such as ‘authenticity’ in heritage are being undermined by gatekeepers such as UNESCO and by the prioritisation of memory and impressions over facts. The past cannot be denied but nor should it be allowed to stand without criticism. In Monumental Lies: Culture Wars and the Truth about the Past, Robert Bevan argues that if monuments and architecture really are evidence then we need to be inventive about transforming sites of honour into sites of shame.

About our Speaker

Robert Bevan is an author and journalist. He is the author of Monumental Lies: Culture Wars and the Truth about the Past (Verso), a book of the year for the Financial Times and the Art Newspaper. His previous book, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War was described as “ground-breaking” by the New York Review of Books. He is a member of the Mayor of London’s Commission on Diversity in the Public Realm, and ICORP, the expert committee of ICOMOS on risk preparedness. He is a heritage consultant described as “one of the most compelling progressive voices in the heritage world” (Tribune).