From well-loved sitcoms to our taste for instant coffee, the influence of wartime on culture was immense. Historians and critics choose their highlights

The second world war had seismic effects on architecture, with reconstruction aimed not just at repairing war damage, but at creating a new society that would never let anything like fascism and world war happen again. As we get more distant from the events and actual memory, the war is increasingly remembered in terms of nostalgic kitsch