The Spectator’s Notes | 8 November 2018

The sixth of November 1918 was remembrance day for my great-grandfather, Norman Moore. It was the fourth anniversary of the death of his younger son, Gillachrist (known as Gilla), a second lieutenant in the Royal Sussex Regiment, who had been killed at the first battle of Ypres. Sitting quietly in his London house in Gloucester Place, Moore heard shouting in the street: rumours of peace were spreading. ‘If it be so,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘how appropriate on Gillachrist’s day for he gave his life to resist German power.’ It became so five days later.

On 9 November, NM (as he was always called) attended the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in Guildhall: ‘A fanfare of trumpets announced Mr Lloyd George. Soon after, we went into the great hall, where Mr Pitt, and Beckford & Wellington were ready to add their marble grandeur to the feast.’ The prime minister, whom NM, in those pre-broadcasting days, had never before heard, began, ‘ “The German messengers have not been able to reach Marshal Foch so I have nothing to tell you.