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David Dimbleby:
There are all sorts of ways you could look at 'The
Home Front,' as we've called this room - the south of England.
But there is a theme which goes through it, which is that this part
of England has come, for painters as well as for writers and poets,
to symbolise a sort of defiance of the continent. In the First World
War, in the Second World War, when people are defining patriotism,
what do we find people turning to? They turn to the white cliffs,
they turn to the South Downs. You can see them being used to give
a message, usually a message of defiance to our enemies on the continent.
That's the sort of strand that comes through it all.
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