Last Sunday, with the rest of the nation, when 11am came, I stood in silent respect and contemplation. This, more than any other year, the country felt the emotional poignancy of Remembrance because of the centenary of the end of the First World War.

For those few brief seconds we mirrored in ourselves the great loss suffered by others. And then we may well have asked ourselves what we have learned in the 100 years since.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve become fascinated by history. Almost inevitably, one question has repeatedly arisen. What is it about humanity that makes us prone to such barbarism, to use our fellow man as a weapon, and to dehumanise others to the point where they are nothing more than a pool of blood on a battlefield?

Looking back, how could anybody excuse that horribly destructive war? How could anybody justify the wholesale slaughter of a nation’s youth? The annihilation of communities remembered now as chiselled lists of brothers, sons, husbands, and fathers on memorials weathered by time and anchored by the stories they hold.

The answer is as simple as human greed – human greed for power. Those at the helm would couch it in different terms, as they still do today. But the First World War was down to simple rivalry between the royalty of Europe, who were in fact one extended family. Along with the ruling classes, so divorced from society and so deluded were they that they conducted their own power struggle and, as tends to happen, dragged millions and millions of ordinary people into the mire.

We have all been brought up with the psyche of ‘you fight for your country and you die for your country’. And that’s an honour – if it’s a fight worth dying for. But I really do wonder here who they were dying for? Were they dying for our country? Or were they dying for European royalty playing a game of chess with real lives? A pampered minority in ivory towers completely unaffected by the shells and gas, while millions of ordinary people breathed their last.

Those who died couldn’t have been further removed from the cause. The result was a complete disdain for human life. Add in the fact that the vast majority of people at that time were disenfranchised and we are talking about a tiny per cent dictating terms for everyone else.

To fully understand the sacrifices of others, we need the context of history. If we don’t understand the past, how can we understand the future? With knowledge comes power, and that is perhaps why we are so often denied the bigger picture. It suits governments not to wholly educate the people, to view world events through a screen of shallow obfuscation.

It starts in schools. We need to broaden the historic outlook that is taught to pupils. Why are kids still taught about Henry VIII and Elizabeth I? The Tudors have little relevance to a modern child in the modern world. We need to teach them about the days of empire, the influence that these vast controlling interests had, and the way they shaped the world we live in today.

We need to explain how the global rhetoric we have now is directly related to then. That the ripples from the Great War, the ‘War to End All Wars’, are still being felt now.

The Second World War was unfinished business from the First World War. After that bloodshed, the Americans, along with the British and the French, reallocated geographical boundaries, creating new countries. To fuel their own interests in the Middle East, and because they knew oil was the future, they then put people into power in countries such as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and even Saudi Arabia. This has led to the issues we are experiencing today of extremism, terrorism and refugees fleeing from those same countries, sparking a fear of immigration that means we now have Brexit. The same can be seen throughout Europe.

We should make a relevant global history an absolute must in our curriculum. That way young people will open their minds instead of being controlled by how they are educated.

We also have to accept a responsibility to educate ourselves. Over the last 20 years, I have done just that, and it has been an amazing journey of discovery. It’s not about being clever, it’s about being inquisitive about the world around us. From that comes a desire to change the systems and people who are letting us and our families down.

I value loyalty very highly. My respect for those who have given their lives for our country knows no bounds, and that includes the huge number of people from the empire who fought too. More than three million soldiers and labourers from across the empire and Commonwealth served alongside the British Army in the First World War. The Asians of today should also be proud of the role their ancestors played in protecting Britain, and post-war in the rebuilding process. Religion doesn’t have to define a person. We are British. If you feel like you belong, then you grow.

Last Sunday, we, as a nation, stood together. Now we must pursue everything we, as individuals, can do to ensure our children are never again fed to the lion of war.

For that to happen, the history books must lie open.