A PRIORITY for The Northern Echo this year is to do justice to the centenary of the First World War. This is a milestone of extraordinary significance and it must be properly remembered.

The Northern Echo:

The planning of our centenary coverage has been under way for some time and the results are already bearing fruit.

Our North-East At War website is developing into a comprehensive, moving and unique archive of this region’s contribution to the Great War and exciting plans will be announced soon about a Northern Echo campaign to mark the centenary.

In the meantime, Stockton Borough Council is to be congratulated for unveiling what I think is a wonderfully creative First World War One project.

Stockton’s Book of Remembrance lists 1,245 local soldiers who died for their country.

In April, packets of seeds will be handed out to schools, businesses and community groups so that 1,245 sunflowers can be grown, each remembering a fallen soldier.

Schoolchildren will be tasked with researching the lives of the soldiers and s u g g e s t i n g what contributions they might have gone on to make to society had they come home from the trenches.

Sunflowers reach full maturity at the end of the summer, but the 1,245 blooms will be cut down early to symbolise the prematurely lost lives. They will then be brought together for a remembrance event on August 4 – the 100th anniversary of Britain entering the war.

The sunflower idea links the generations in a simple but stunning way and sets an example to other communities. Let’s hope it plants seeds of thought in other parts of the region.

  • visit our website at northeastatwar.co.uk RATHER harshly, Stockton was judged to be the North-East’s most unromantic town in a survey ahead of Valentine’s Day.

It was an opportunity far too good to miss.

I told our local reporter Chris Webber to go boldly into Stockton in search of romance.

“Is there any chance I can go to Paris instead?”

he asked.

My wife will testify that I’m a romantic at heart – but have you seen Eurostar prices?

ANEW crime wave involving thieves stealing brass door knockers made the news last week. In one Manchester street alone, 30 knockers were nicked for scrap.

I’m grateful to Gavin Aitchison, news editor at our sister paper, The York Press, who suggested that police were making door-todoor inquiries – but getting no response.

A REQUEST has come in for me to compere a “Big Fat News Quiz” in aid of Darlington Samaritans.

More details will follow in due course. Suffice for now to say I’ve agreed in principle – providing there’s an assurance that the title was not inspired by the compere’s body shape.