'Curating Armageddon': Revealing the Heritage Significance of Dover Castle's Cold War Collections

Geopolitical, historical and architectural analysis of the Cold War is often hindered by a lens that overemphasises a top-down notion of "East versus West" (Schofield, Cocroft and Dobronovskaya 2021). It is essential that we address this knowledge gap as the legacy of the Cold War continues to shape the way people live in the present, and anxiety about Armageddon, a disaster that could destroy all or most of the world, remains present in the public psyche.

The Cold War is often presented as a conflict between nations or political philosophies with little acknowledgement or engagement with the experiences of average people who lived through it. Objects from this time period currently reside at Dover Castle and other English Heritage (EH) sites, and have the potential to allow for a new perspective beyond the traditional top-down view.

At the same time, the accumulation of items from periods of the recent past continues to be a challenge for many museums (Fredheim, Macdonald and Morgan 2020). The Cold War collection at EH's Dover Castle has a key role to play in addressing this problem, as a critical museological analysis of the material has the potential to highlight details of life in England during the Cold War.

Such a study would reveal a nuanced story of what life was like under the potential threat of nuclear Armageddon. As such, I propose analysing and identifying objects that are most relevant to engage with current audiences about modern anxieties relating to the end of the world and finding the best way for those to be saved and displayed.

Dover Castle has been a place of importance for thousands of years, making it the ideal context to undertake this kind of analysis. This collection has the potential for a perspective shift from top-down understandings of the Cold War to an engagement with objects and artefacts that can facilitate the connection between people living in the present with the past.

The legacy of the Cold War continues to impact life in the present, thus it is essential to preserve key items and their history for the future. What can the Cold War collection here tell us about past anxieties over nuclear annihilation? How did people cope, how did people adjust and change their behaviour?

Can the museum engage with parallel anxieties in the present by connecting people with the experiences of people living through the Cold War?