This was taken from a piece of the Berlin wall in Potsdamer Platz in the middle of modern Berlin. To call the remaining six concretes slabs a memorial would be a gross exaggeration. Remnants or scraps might be a better name. You get the feeling that it’s a part of history the city’s fathers would sooner forget, though paradoxically the nearby Holocaust Memorial, another historical event you might think the Germans would like to play down a bit, covers a 4.7 acre site with 2,711 tomb-like concrete slabs called “stelae”, and is a truly unforgettable memorial.

The wall inevitably attracts graffiti. I’ve always felt a personal link with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) logo, as it was first used on the CND protest march from Trafalgar Square in London to Aldermaston in Berkshire, home of the UK’s Atomic Weapon Research Establishment, on my third birthday, fifty years ago. Designed by former Royal College of Art pacifist Gerald Holton it was based on the letters N (Nuclear) and D (Disarmament) in Flag Semaphore, and is now used as a universal symbol of peace and love.