The last Turkish soldier left Jerusalem by St Stephen’s Gate at 7 am on 9 December 1917. By coincidence that was the first day of Jewish Hanukkah, the festival of lights. Hanukkah celebrated the liberation of Israel from the occupying forces of the Seleucid Empire, under Seleucus Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 134BC.

But then the Jewish rabbis say that there’s no such thing as a coincidence, the hand of God was clearly visible in this.

But now the real work of creating the Jewish homeland was to begin, with the country freed for the first time since 635AD when the Arab Conquest armies had first arrived – and that is a work in progress that has been continuing from that day in December 1917 to the present day.

Now we have to go back to San Remo in Italy in 1920 because that was where I left off the story.

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