The Cenotaph was designed as a symbol of multi-faith (and atheist) unity

Every year I lay a wreath a week early, because Blyth, my nearest town, was a submarine port. Submariners were banned from the first Armistice Day parade in Whitehall by a bossy admiral on the grounds that they were pirates who targeted civilians. In response they adopted skull-and-crossbones badges and arranged their own celebrations on the Embankment in London, and in Blyth and Dundee, a week before the official ones. The tradition survives more than a century later.

The veterans who a decade ago would have memories of chasing the Bismarck or bringing a pet reindeer calf back on board a sub from Murmansk have now faded from the scene. This year I talked to one sailor whose last mission was to take a nuclear–missile boat out of Barrow on its maiden voyage in the 1990s.