THIS week Ruth Wishart reflects on the Remembrance Day services around the world to mark 100 years since the end of the First World War.

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FOR all the obvious reasons the remembrance events on Armistice Day held special resonance.

I particularly cherished the pictures of Chancellor Merkel of Germany and President Macron of France sharing a hug as they visited a replica of the railway carriage in which the peace document was signed.

These are two nations who twice fought bitter wars within the space of 50 years in the 20th century, and two leaders who recognise that there is nothing glorious about conflict, death and destruction. The world stumbled into that awful conflict in 1914 as a product of failed statesmanship and international confusion which needlessly cost millions of lives. The second had more rational origins, but, as every conflict in the world has taught us, only negotiation can bring an end to it.

Some of the more predictable commentators managed to find Jeremy Corbyn’s dress code of more pertinent interest than the wars crowds gathered to remember last Sunday. Frankly, I’m much more exercised about his going AWOL over Brexit.

The booby prize for getting just about everything wrong goes to the occupant of the White House who flew thousands of miles to watch cable TV in the US ambassador’s Parisian home whilst other world leaders were honouring their dead at the sites of the mass war graves.

There’s a word for the likes of him, but the Advertiser gets touchy about certain sweary words being deployed.