Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR’s international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world.
Six years ago in the spring, as COVID-19 cases surged in remote China, Britain was torn between sealing off the country and allowing daily life to continue in its unsettling state. For those who lived through it, those weeks – and the months that followed – were a strange state of turmoil.
Today, that collective experience remains etched in London’s landscape. Built by ordinary citizens in 2021, the 1,640-foot-long National Covid Memorial Wall stretches along the banks of the River Thames just opposite Parliament, as if keeping watch over the country’s corridors of power.
On a recent visit, I took a walk along the mural, where more than a quarter million hand-drawn hearts represented all the lives lost to the coronavirus and the pain of those left behind. Amanda and Andy wrote, “Dad, our hero. Loved and missed.” He added, “Our best friend.” “My very loving mother, Sylvia Renton, 1926-2021,” another heart read.
The UK entered its first COVID lockdown on March 23, 2020. But what happened next also included a series of scandals that still shocked the public with grief and confusion: the Prime Minister’s “Partygate”, Health Secretary’s office issue Captured by CCTV cameras, and controversy over purchase of personal protective equipment.
That’s why this wall matters.
A long, unbroken line of hearts beating boldly against forgetting. It is both a memorial and a mirror. It honors the dead while reminding those in power across the river of the cost of their missteps.
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