IT was the so-called ‘war to end all wars’ that proved to be anything but and claimed millions of lives wordlwide.

As we prepare to mark the 100th aniversary of the outbreak of World War I this year, it is worth pointing out that the majority of people reading this will have had an ancestor involved in that bloody conflict.

It doesn’t matter where you are from; the British mainland, Ireland, India, Australia, or New Zealand, to name but a few.

There is a cemetery for every nation in northern France, the Dardanelles, Iraq and other far flung places.

So before you dismiss the forthcoming orgy of nostalgia as irrelevant to you, think again.

This is not a celebration. The industrial scale of the slaughter on both sides would render any hint of triumphalism obscene.

It is a four-year period of remembrance and tribute to those who fought and died and a reminder, if we needed it, of the sheer horror of war.

Maybe the Great War passed your family by. If so, lucky you.

But the chances are it didn’t. Now is as good a time as any to find out.