The first national two-minute silence was held on Armistice Day 1919. In 1945 it was transferred to the nearest Remembrance Sunday, commemorating the fallen of both world wars. After a campaign mounted by the British Legion, in 1995 the two-minute silence was restored to Armistice Day, thus commemorating the end of World War I, but it was still observed on Remembrance Sunday commemorating both.
Three pocket diaries of Kittie Calderon’s have survived, for 1926, 1937 and 1939. However, only that for 1937, when Kittie was seventy and established at White Raven, Kennington, near Ashford in Kent, contains an entry for 11 November. It consists of seven words:
Quietly alone out of doors for silence.
When I first read it I simply assumed that she had visitors (which she often did) and went out into the garden of White Raven for a rest from them, or to clear her mind. Years later, the penny dropped that she meant ‘to observe the Silence’. One wonders what her thoughts were then.
