When Andrew Hamilton began browsing through his Grandfather’s diaries, which he had kept throughout his long-life, he found them at first rather dull.  Then he found one volume different from the rest, which proved to be an account of his Grandfather’s life in the trenches in the First World War.  As he read on, he realised that it was a rare thing, a first-hand account of the so-called ‘Christmas truce’ of December 1914 – a truce in which Captain Robert Hamilton had played a major part.  It was this diary that formed the basis of the recently published book by Andrew Hamilton and Alan Reed and on which Sir Andrew’s talk was based.

Another packed audience listened enthralled as he told the story of how hostilities had been set aside for a short while as the men on both sides met in no-man’s land, exchanged small gifts and even played football.  It is a story that one would dismiss as fiction were it not for the fact that here was the evidence of one who had witnessed it and even promoted it.

It was griping, moving and also deeply humorous as Sir Andrew told it, helped by a fine collection of photographs and the drawings of one of the men in Capt. Hamilton’s troop, the famous cartoonist Bruce Bairnsfather.  It was Bairnsfather’s creation ‘Old Bill’, familiar to many of the older members of the audience, who familiarised the life of ‘Tommy’ of the First World War, with all its hardship and its humour.