Onwards, unknown soldier

Every headstone would be identical: they were equal in death

THERE was no doubt in the mind of The Times’s leader writer about the significance of the event. The ceremony, he wrote, had been ‘the most beautiful, the most touching, and the most impressive that in all its long, eventful story this island has ever seen’. Hyperbole was not the common stock in trade of the paper in 1920, but seemed merited for the Unknown Warrior, laid to rest in Westminster Abbey on Armistice Day that year.

As the Cenotaph did, the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, now a century old, immediately captured the hearts of the emotionally tongue-tied British people as an appropriate expression of their deepest thoughts and feelings. Today, these monuments still resonate and feature in acts of remembrance each year, but their original meanings may have been lost. Earlier this year, the Cenotaph was