A year of 1914

By Charlie McCann

In Britain, the official £50m commemoration of the start of the first world war—which will run for four years—begins on August 4th, when a candlelit prayer service at Westminster Abbey takes place at the exact moment Britain declared war on Germany. Before that, though, there are plenty of opportunities for marking the occasion.

In "The Great War in Portraits" (National Portrait Gallery, Feb 27th-June 15th, free) a newspaper photo of Gavrilo Princip, the Serbian assassin whose shot was “heard round the world”, will be hung next to portraits of Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Winston Churchill and German expressionist masterpieces by Max Beckmann and Ernst Kirchner.