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As the first sightings of crocuses and daffodils herald the dawning of spring, so the first sightings of poppies - not real ones you understand - tell us that we are headed from autumn towards winter, and this year, to the 80th anniversary of the ending of the second of the two conflicts which we remember every November. At the Manchester Museum last night, there was an event which sought to enlarge our remembrance by telling the story of three million Indian civilians - British subjects at the time - who died from starvation and malnutrition at the end of the Second War in the famine beginning in 1943which afflicted Bengal in what was then known as British India. To give that number some context, that's 3 million compared with approximately 385,000 British soldiers who died across the world in the World War II, and around 70,000 non-combatants who died chiefly in enemy bombing raids. That for 80 years after the end of the Second War - and some 107 years after the armistice of 1918 - we have continued to commemorate the terrible loss of life suffered by British soldiers, shapes who are as a nation and people. A country which suffered such fatalities and failed to recollect them in a formal and regular way might be convicted not of mere forgetfulness, but of callousness. But those 3 million in Bengal - casualties as a result of a war not of their making - have apparently no memorial - not even a plaque - anywhere in the world. As the philosopher Judith Butler puts it starkly - some lives are deemed grievable, others not so much. Christianity is a religion in which remembering is extraordinarily central and important. Not for a mere 80 years after the end of hostilities, but for 2000, Christians have devoted themselves to remembering one life and death as not only especially grievable, but as especially significant. The Gospels remember Christ's life. The creeds remember his conception, birth, suffering, death and burial. And the central service of many denominations - variously called the Mass, Eucharist, Holy Communion or Lord's supper - not only includes the memories contained in Gospel and Creed, but is structured as an enactment of Christ's own recollection of his life and death. 'Do this in remembrance of me'. Many Christians in times of trouble recall Christ's words to his disciples in Luke's Gospel - 'are not five sparrows sold for two pennies' - a better bargain than in Matthew's Gospel where it is 'two for one penny' - 'and yet' he continues, 'not one of them is forgotten before God'. Since sparrows then, as now, were small, numerous and not specially charismatic, the point is the more touching. God's remembrance of his creatures is capacious and reaches to all. It seems to me that 80 years after the second War it is overdue that our remembrance of that conflict should encompass more than it has. War imposes grievous losses and terrible costs, and we do well not to forget the wars but to widen and deepen our recollection of them.