The 25th of October

 On this day, the British attacked the Russian guns in Balaclava on what would inspire the poem 'the charge of the light brigade' byTennyson, a poem that simultaneously praises the brigade whilst mourning the futility of the charge, whilst also criticising the leaders (but in that Victorian way of not naming names).
 The Crimean war was one that had a lasting effect on the British public. This was the war that made a name of Florence Nightingale, the nurse and writer and statistician who ran a reform campaign to improve the conditions of sanitation in hosptials.

 Curiously, for an event that was so influential on the media of the time, and has remained in our collective memory as a result, I was only able to find two films about it (both called The charge of the light brigade). Apparently the 1936 version is much more historically innacurate than the 1968 version, but that was the intention of the screenwriter as it had based it on research done into the battle,and he had aimed to be realistic. And Britain in the 60s had a strange kind of fascination with the Victorian (and Edwardian) era,probably because it felt quite far away in time but still also quite close - the Empire might have ended in the 50s, but Britain would still be living with the legacy of empire for decades to come; not just in terms of international relations, but also re-defining what Britain was. In the 1960s, it was obvious that the sun had set, but it was still a part of culture, and I think this confusion can be seen in the pop culture of the 60s - interest in the past, but also a reinvention of British icons as something that definitely didn't represent an empire.