Don't be dazzled: why redecorating first world war ships is so cowardly

Two battleships are to be repainted by contemporary artists in the 'dazzle' camouflage of 1914-18. Isn't this a disturbingly celebratory way to remember a monstrous war?

The first world war, it was just like the Olympics. It brought so many people together. Admittedly, they came together to die "like cattle", as the poet Wilfred Owen put it a bit grumpily but what a moving occasion nonetheless. It deserves to be marked by another Cultural Olympiad.

Perhaps I am exaggerating the happy-clappy banality of the cultural events planned to mark this year's centenary of the first world war's outbreak, but a remark actually made by Maria Miller, secretary of state for culture, media and sport, at the launch is not far off: "The first world war had such a great deal of culture associated with it from the poets to visual artists "