Speaking as somebody who is half English and half Hungarian, World War I still seems to me a familiar and seismic event, as if it had only just ended.

In Britain and Europe, no event is less forgotten than World War I, or 'The Great War,' as it was called until 1939.

When my elders mentioned 'The War,' they invariably meant that of 1914-1918, even after 1939, for the Second World War was merely the continuation of the first, 'an armistice of 20 years,' as Marshal Foch had accurately predicted at the Versailles Peace Conference, with some changes of side.

Anyone who experienced World War I close-hand was grossed out by it forever. It just was so awful.

I always thought those World War II films with German people speaking English with German accents was weird.

My father, who had lost a brother, fighting on the Austrian side in World War I, was a committed pacifist.