Staging Waterloo: the Battle in the Capital

By 1815, London had long considered itself the centre of Britain and the wider Empire, so how did it respond when “the greatest victory which History records” (according to The Chester Chronicle) occurred a mere 200 miles from it? By co-opting it, naturally.

This talk explores some of the ways London imported and recreated Waterloo for entertainment, nationalistic pride, and monetary gain, in the process changing the definition of spectacle and shaping the “correct” history of the battle for generations to come.

Speaker:
Luke Reynolds, Ph.D., FRHistS, is the award-winning author of 'Who Owned Waterloo? Battle, Memory, and Myth in British History, 1815-1852' (OUP, 2022). A native New Yorker, he is an Assistant Professor in Residence at the University of Connecticut’s Stamford Campus.