It has been a long journey from the words of John McCrae written at Ypres in 1915 to the astonishing sight that greeted the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry at the Tower of London yesterday. Thousands of ceramic poppies there form a blood-red sea that stretches along the moat and grows ever larger by the day.
From poppy appeals to this, a spectacular artwork that already consists of about 120,000 hand-made poppies placed in the ground: little wonder the royals could scarcely hide their amazement.
“Spectacular,” said the duke, before joining its creator, Paul Cummins, to climb the Middle Tower to view it from on high. “Amazing,” said the duchess.
By the time Armistice Day arrives there will be 888,246 poppies, one