‘I’ve got the wild card! Goody! So! Now I take another.’ As Ginny made her time-consuming decision about what to do next, out of the window of the fourth-floor flat, I could see the neighbouring apartment block. A lady was lighting a candle and placing it in her window. Over the next few minutes more candles appeared in windows the entire length of the street. It was a clear, dark night and the flickering orange flames dazzlingly illuminated the black summer night sky. And then I realised… today marked the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War. Across Britain, candles were being lit to remember the countless millions mercilessly slaughtered across front lines the world over, exactly a century ago. Ginny didn’t notice the candles. She was concentrating on winning the hand. But I was awestruck by the situation before me. The world at large was remembering the forgotten masses – faceless and nameless men without a number – which had been lost for a hundred years. The lady sitting opposite me, who was now beating me at cards and had correctly predicted the outcome of Deal or No Deal on television just that afternoon, pre-dated the Great War by six months.

Lenny was born a year after the Great War had ended, but his war record and adventures between 1939 and 1945 was testament to the extraordinary achievements of a remarkable man. There was living history in this apartment. And I had been welcomed into its world and embraced into the lives of two of the most incredible people I had ever known – or indeed, ever will. When I’d met them three and a half years previously, my life had sunk to its lowest ebb. But the unique occupants of that fourth-floor flat in London had touched my soul. Although they didn’t know it, my elderly companions were the guardian angels who would ultimately give me the strength to turn my life around.

As they approached the ends of their lives, those who had lived and loved through the golden years of the twentieth century helped a lost young man, out of his time, find his way slowly but surely across the jungle of the modern world. The times we shared together were filled with discovery, joy, sadness and loss – but above all love, inspiration and laughter.