You are the only person known to me who goes on about Bannockburn, John - so if you stop....
As to The Guardian's political credentials, I neither think 'left-wing' pejorative, nor accurate.
It once was a consistent shade of warm pink but now is merely pale beige with some fluorescent pink, deep blue and occasional green spots; its purple passages are largely confined to some of its coverage of the visual arts - but it does give some good black ink to Timothy Garton Ash, who remains not only the best but almost the sole reason - book reviews aside - for buying it; well, that and the awfulness of all the English alternatives.
As to remembrance, I always find two things running through my head.
One is a piece of film showing in Britain's cinemas in the autumn of 1938 from Edmund Goulding's outstanding remake of "The Dawn Patrol". Donald Crisp, in his magnificent performance as the Adjutant at the end of the film, as he receives the heroically dead squadron commander's (Errol Flynn) flying helmet and goggles says; "This says that a very brave gentleman died today - and what have all these deaths accomplished, in this war and in the wars that are to come?"
The other is the inscription on the monument at Montemaggiore al Metauro at the spot where Churchill, Alexander and Leese watched the final battle for the Gothic line in August 1944. It records that this battle awakened the memories of that other 'decisive' battle of the Metauro against Hasdrubal over two thousand years previously and regrets that so little has been learned in that time.
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