Armistice/Remembrance Day

Ninety years ago today, on the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, World War One ended. Today in London three of the remaining veterans took part in memorial ceremonies at London's Cenotaph. They were Henry Allingham, 112, Royal Air Force; Harry Patch, 110, Army; and Bill Stone, 108, Royal Navy.

My grandfather was a WWI veteran and I've met many others. It's strange to see such an important event pass from living memory into history, but with all of the remaining veterans being well over 100, they won't be with us long.

Here in Madrid there's an exhibition titled "¡1914! The Avant-Garde and the Great War" exploring how World War One affected the art and ideas of Europe. I've blogged about it here.

Twenty million people died in the war, and it changed Western civilization in countless ways. Right now I'm reading Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, which is one of the best books I've seen on this subject. Highly recommended.


Photo courtesy Caroline Ford, from Wikimedia Commons, reproduced under GNU Free Documentation License.