Remembrance Sunday is held in the United Kingdom as a day to commemorate the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women in the two World Wars and later conflicts.

As well as the National Service in London, events were staged at town and village war memorials, often featuring processions of civic dignitaries and veterans.

[4] The first UK commemoration of the end of the First World War took place at Buckingham Palace, with King George V hosting a "Banquet in Honour of The President of the French Republic" in the evening of 10 November 1919.

The first official Armistice Day events were subsequently held in the grounds of the Palace on the morning of 11 November 1919,[5] which included a two-minute silence at 11am as a mark of respect for those who died in the war and those left behind.

[6] While the initial, spontaneous public reaction when the Armistice was signed on 11 November 1918 was jubilation and celebration, the 1919 banquet was criticised for being too celebratory.

The following year, Armistice Day in 1920, the funeral of the Unknown Soldier took place at the London Cenotaph and a two-minute silence was observed throughout the nation.

Pacifism gained great publicity from a 1933 student debate in the Oxford University Union that voted for a resolution that "this House will in no circumstances fight for King and Country".

[8] In June of that year, the prime minister, Clement Attlee, announced in the House of Commons that "the Government felt that this view would commend itself to all quarters of the country.

[17] A common criticism of Remembrance Sunday ceremonies and the Royal British Legion is that by focusing only on veterans and military persons who have died, the vast majority of the casualties of war (civilians) are forgotten.

[18][19][20] In the past, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs laid a wreath on behalf of all the British Overseas Territories.

In 1987 a bomb was detonated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) just before a Remembrance Sunday ceremony in Enniskillen, killing twelve people.

In 2006, then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown proposed that in addition to Remembrance Sunday, a new national day to celebrate the achievements of veterans should be instituted.

[24] Every year, the British Deputy High Commission in Kolkata, India, organises a Remembrance Sunday Commemoration at the Glorious Dead Cenotaph in the Maidan.