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Features

Who cares if Wagner’s 200? The plague of the anniversary

Centenaries now seem to be the only reason that publishers and concert planners do anything at all

24 August 2013

9:00 AM

24 August 2013

9:00 AM

Back in the 1960s, the producers of the Tonight programme had a running joke for linking the show’s segments. They would use lines like: ‘And that item commemorated the 23rd anniversary of….’ Or: ‘On Tuesday Mr Jones would have been 73.’ There is something about anniversaries, however audaciously crowbarred in, that always gives the illusion of order amid the chaos and relevance among the accidental.

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Douglas Murray, is an associate director of the Henry Jackson Society, and blogs regularly at spectator.co.uk/douglasmurray

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