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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Tomb of the Unknown Warrior
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A marble slab in the nave of *Westminster Abbey, which is the first detail to confront a visitor entering by the west door. It marks the grave in which the Unknown Warrior was buried on 11 November 1920, the second anniversary of the *Armistice. In an inspired symbolic act, a body was selected at random from the unmarked graves in British war cemeteries. The coffin was draped in the so-called Padre's Flag (a Union Jack which had been used at the front and which now hangs nearby in the Abbey), and was brought to London with great ceremony.
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The earth surrounding it, beneath its slab of Belgian marble, had also been brought from the battlefields. The inscription, in capital letters, begins: 'Beneath this stone rests the body of a British warrior unknown by name or rank brought from France to lie among the most illustrious of the land and buried here on Armistice Day.'
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