Thankyou.

There is really nothing I can add to the words, the verse, the painting, sculpture and music of the men who have seen our nation in War. Or to their silence and inward turning. So to all those men, and today women, quick or dead, I say simply thankyou.

And for my father. A bigger man than I will ever be. 

We will remember you.

A Week of Remembrance

The centenary of the ending of the Great War will make this year's Remembrance Day celebrations some of the most poignant of our Cenotaph ceremonies. The Western Front holds a place on our collective national conscience like no other war; there was no such occasion in 1956 to mark the centenary of the Crimean War, nor in 2002 to mark the end of the Boer War. 

The wars of the last century were fought by British and Empire, later Commonwealth, troops from every corner of the globe. Our brothers in arms were Christian, Sikh, Muslim, Daoist or one of a score of other beliefs, with skins both white as milk and black as ebony and every shade between. When you're together in the line, no real soldier is a biological racist. 

Today, in British units stationed around the world on this special anniversary, the newness is not the racial diversity of our armed forces - this is long established - but the women who share the dangers and privations of the men. May God watch over them all and keep them safe in their duty.

Sikh troops on the Western Front in WWI