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Good morning.

My wife鈥檚 favourite flower is the snowdrop, which starts to bloom around her birthday at the beginning of February, through to mid-March鈥� marking the end of the cold, dark days of winter that she finds difficult, heralding the spring. This year they were late, so none appeared for her birthday but there are plenty in our garden now.

On this day 25 years ago they were in full bloom in Dunblane, Scotland, when a man entered the gym of the local primary school with four legally held handguns. There he shot and killed sixteen five and six-year-old pupils, and their teacher, wounding thirteen others, before killing himself. Consequently, that small Scottish town and its primary school will be forever associated with this, the largest mass shooting in British history. It even features regularly in articles about its most famous pupil, the tennis champion Andy Murray, who was in the school that day.

A quarter of a century on these events will loom large in the minds of the bereaved and many in Dunblane, and far beyond, even though public commemorations will be restricted due to covid. But in the wake of that atrocity the 鈥淪nowdrop Campaign鈥� led by Mrs Ann Pearson, a friend of the bereaved families, prompted a change in the law in 1997, making it effectively illegal to buy or possess a handgun in the UK. Thus such a tragedy is much less likely here now. It is never possible to erase the pain of such trauma, but I hope that this has been a small comfort to those still mourning.

God of the wounded and bereaved, be with those who grieve this day, and prompt us all to make this a world a safer place for the vulnerable, a kinder place for the hurting, offering hope for the future. AMEN