They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.
This Remembrance Sunday will be like no other, but one thing will stay constant: these lines, by Laurence Binyon, will be recited with great solemnity at war memorials, in churches and online across the country.
There is something timeless about these words, and deliberately so. They echo the style and manner which the English language had used, since the Renaissance, to talk about and with the Almighty. ‘They are words’, said Roger Scruton, ‘with the same simple and incontrovertible nature as the words chosen by Cranmer: words that do not merely bear repetition but are made to be repeated.’
Remembrance Sunday is one of two days when, beyond Christmas and Easter, the English are more likely than at any other time to attend church.
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