The First World War famously came to its symbolic end on the 'eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month' in 1918. The war had been unique in its scale – both in terms of geography and the number of people involved – and the battlefields of Europe, Africa and the Middle East had left some 16 million dead. In the United Kingdom, the end to the fighting was initially met with an air of triumphant celebration but many felt a more reverent ceremony was called for.

Exactly one year after the signing of the Armistice, people from all walks of life gathered to pay tribute to the dead with a ceremony not unlike the one we still observe a century later. A proclamation by George V had called for a two-minute silence during which ‘all locomotion should cease, so that, in perfect stillness, the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the glorious dead.

IWM records and tells the stories of those who have lived, fought and died in conflict since 1914.