Today I walked over to the Tower of London to see thousands of poppies placed in the dry moat to commemorate the First World War. The poppies stretched over the other side of the moat from where I took this picture and flowed down part of the wall of the tower. The final poppy will be planted on November 11, Armistice Day. It was quite spectacular.

The installation by Paul Cummins, entitled "Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red" will see volunteers place 888,246 ceramic poppies into the dry moat over the course of the summer.

Each poppy represents a British or Colonial military fatality during the war, which saw around 17 million people lose their lives.

More Britons died in WW1 than in any other conflict.

The first ceramic bloom was placed by one of the Tower of London's Yeoman Warders, better known as Beefeaters.