From time to time, when writing this column, I am spoilt for choice. Now is one such occasion: do I write about Remembrance Sunday? Or about the US elections?

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the battle of the Somme, a particularly bloody battle and as such, it means that many people will be marking the 100th anniversary of losing an ancestor. I say ancestor; of course the vast majority of those who died did so before they had a chance to start a family so there will be very few direct line descendants of those who made the ultimate sacrifice. But like many, many people, I had a great uncle who died in 1916, serving in the Gloucester Regiment and who is now buried in Greece (the Great War was not completely restricted to Northern France and Belgium).

When I was young, hearing about him from my grandfather, I thought of him (my great uncle) as an old man. I grew up and when I was the same age as him at the time of his loss, I regarded his death something that cut his life short, but I was uncertain what life had to offer. It is only now, as a middle aged 53 year old with a family of my own and a lifetime of experiences, that I begin to truly understand just what was sacrificed by so many people in the name of war. All those hopes and ambitions, opportunities and prospects, cut short by, in the case of my great uncle, by a sniper’s bullet.

The services of remembrance seem to get larger every year. The sense of loss gets greater, too. But it is right that we never forget.

While we commemorate the dead, the US gets used to the idea of a Republican president. The US election campaign has been one of the most unpleasant periods of history I can remember and brings no credit to either candidate. But the people of the US have spoken and they have elected the insurgent; the challenger candidate who will deliver change to the orthodoxy of the US political system. But here is the irony. Donald Trump is no longer the insurgent: he is now the head of the system and has to run the richest and one of the most powerful countries on the planet. Will his popularity last now that he is the personification of the political system?