THIS is a hugely significant year in terms of human history.

It is the year we mark 100 years since the start of the First World War, and it is heartening to see so many events being planned to commemorate that milestone, from the adaptation of Sebastian Faulkes' magnificent Birdsong at the Playhouse, to an exhibition at the museum and events being organised by communities across the region.

The arts can bring home to us what it was really like in a way that facts and figures simply can’t.

And the Great War had an impact that is hard to overestimate.

Most obviously, there was the loss in human terms.

The conflict cost nine million people their lives. It is a total that is hard to comprehend.

It is such an overwhelmingly large figure that it’s almost impossible to get past the mere fact of the total itself and to really understand that every one of that number was a living, breathing person with a family who loved them and mourned a terrible loss.

And then there was the social impact beyond the tragedy of the ‘lost generation’ of young men.

This is one that modern historians are always arguing about among themselves – in more recent years challenging the widely held view of the war as one in which lions were led by donkeys and a world left disillusioned and shell-shocked.

But historians will always argue and put forward differing perceptions. That’s their job.

And although they may debate the nuances of the impact, that it was profound is not questioned.

The war drew in every major economic power in the world and had a corresponding impact on those economies.

It pushed forward shifts in the class system and women’s rights.

The landscape of Europe was changed forever, with national borders redrawn and the balance of power irrevocably changed.

The treaties signed between the warring powers at the Paris Peace Conference afterwards can be viewed as righting wrongs and freeing people from oppression.

Or they can be seen as diktats forced by the victors on the losers and creating the hatred and resentment that led directly to the rise of Nazism and so to a second global conflict just 20 years later, this time costing 60 million people – 25 per cent of the world’s population – their lives.

Those who came through the First World War did so with the phrase ‘never again’ on their lips.

But it did happen again, very quickly and on an even more horrific scale.

Men who survived the trenches had to stand back and watch their sons go to war, knowing the hell they would face and powerless to stop it.

And that is why it is so important that we remember.