The Moment April Edition: Out Now!

ED'S LETTER

‘History’ is a term often used dismissively. It’s history. It’s dead. Done and dusted. Irrelevant.

But this is a mistaken view. History never really ends. It’s a continuum. It shapes who we are, drives many of our actions in the present and so shapes our future. And there’s another word that we use frequently (it certainly crops up a lot in these pages) which is closely associated with it: heritage. This, as the word itself suggests, is specifically about everything we inherit from the past. It may be in the landscape, in our language and culture, or in our genes – but often, whether we realise it or not, it’s all of these. This issue we talk about the ancient history of the area with archaeologist and Roman specialist Prof Stephen Upex. He is first to point out that the Romans seem, at first sight, to have left us no legacy at all. The Roman town of Durobrivae disappeared. Nothing is visible in the landscape now unless you go and look for it (and, in most cases, dig for it). But history and heritage is never just about objects (much as those objects might fascinate us in museums). If you look elsewhere, you’ll find those Romans are, in a sense, still here – in our language, our culture, our DNA. We are the Romans. And the Saxons, the Vikings, the Normans… And so it continues on.

We also take a peek behind the scenes at Peterborough Museum, and discover what their plans are for the future – how they connect with the past, and how they help all of us to connect with our history and heritage. They are striving to fill the gaps in Peterborough’s story, to bring more recent history to life – some of it within living memory – but also to show us the continuous line stretching all the way back to the monks of the Abbey, the Romans, the Bronze Age people of Must Farm and Flag Fen, all of whom settled here independently, simply because it was a good place to live. It’s good to recognise that, because it still is. And it can be even better. It is getting better. But its relevance runs deeper still.

Right now, in Eastern Europe, a war is being waged that cuts right to the heart of the matter. It’s a battle fought over history, and notions of heritage – about nationhood, about identity, about the right to exist and to choose your future. Lives depend on it, and have been lost defending it. To Ukrainians, nothing could be more relevant or more immediate than their heritage and their history, and events such as this remind us all how important those are – and, perhaps, how we often only appreciate them when they are under threat, or lost.

We must all fight to protect them. Because when they are lost, it’s forever.