This thesis explores two key design-led events held in London, that transformed British national identity. The Great Exhibition of 1851 and the 1951 Festival of Britain. One hundred years apart, these two pivotal cultural events offered a forum for experimentation and debate over what it meant to be British. Drawing on remarkable sketches, plans, photographs and paintings, Transforming national identity & legacy through British expositions attempts to reveal the story of the successes and failures of the Great Exhibition and the Festival of Britain. The written thesis explores the legacy and aspirations of the Great Exhibition and the Festival of Britain on the reshaping of taste and development of 19th and 20th century Britain.
