You are drawn into the ceremonies that symbolise the remembrance, the gratitude and the care of a nation. Whoever you are, you are aware of poppies and war memorials, of the Royal Albert Hall, the Cenotaph and the Chelsea Pensioners. It is one of the last truly national rituals left to us. We are about to keep Remembrance Sunday and commemorate the centenary of the 1918 Armistice. Wilfred Owen called it 'the pity of war'. I have heard it said that the war that was declared in the summer of 1914 did not truly come to an end until 1989. Perhaps, with the hindsight of another 30 years, we might say that it has still to come to an end. The red horseman of the Apocalypse with his bloodied sword who takes away peace rides this earth yet. You read it knowing, as the protagonists did not, that the lights were going out all over Europe. It captures the dying of an era, the end of innocence. That’s the first line of Ford Maddox Ford’s novel The Good Soldier published just as the Great War began. “This is without doubt the saddest story I have ever heard.' Why Christians are joining the board games resurgence.‘A near-death experience led me to Jesus’.

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