The town of St Neots has, for the past ten days, been decorated with wreaths and hangings of knotted red poppies. Each wreath featured a white poppy to commemorate all victims of war including conscientious objectors.

This morning we held our annual service of remembrance in the Colmworth country park next to the silhouette of the unknown soldier

As always, I thought of my grandpa Sam who signed up early in the first world war and remarkably survived the Battle of the Somme when it is thought one million combatants died. His brother also survived and returned uninjured from the so-called Great War.

Today, in Ukraine, trench warfare has returned and soldiers and civilians die in their hundreds of thousands.

Wars continue to be fought in the Middle East, in Sudan and elsewhere. Many conflicts abate without resolution – their embers ready to reignite at any time.

It seems as though we human beings have never learnt the lessons of history and are therefore doomed to repeat them.