Restorations

Abstract

The return of the English monarchy under Charles II remains a crucial point of reference and return in UK political memory. Cultural memory reflects this centrality while exploring alternative ways to remember the period and its present significance. This begins with Edward Bond’s play Restoration (1981) and ends with Jessica Swale’s Nell Gwynn (2015). I argue that Herbert Wilcox’s 1934 film Nell Gwynn provides a template of restorative fantasy played out against a backdrop of austerity, which modern memory texts replicate as often as they displace it.