AS WE HAVE SEEN, memory is both static and dynamic, such that information both persists and changes over time. Two specific features contributing to the dynamic nature of memory will be focused on here: association with present events, and multidirectionality.

Presentism is a general characteristic of memory, since the past will only be recalled and recounted if it has some interest for the present public. One of the ways that the relevance of the past for today is displayed is in explicit links made between past and present. With regard to memory of the Norman Conquest, in Chapter 2 when considering the question of tradition, we discussed such past-present links: naming the Conquest as a starting point for practices that are relevant today; recounting foundations of present edifices and settlements going back to the Conquest; and discussing today's heritage sites, artefacts and commemorative events, as well as referring to ancestry. Another way of linking past and present is using 1066 or the Conquest as arbitrary starting points, for example to count the number of English/British monarchs since that date, to list the richest men in Britain since 1066, or to discuss the evolution of the number of British village pubs since the Conquest (in the newspaper corpus the closing down of pubs seems to occasion as great a dismay as the excessive drinking in Britain!).