This year is not only the bicentennial of Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi, but also the centenary one of Britain's outstanding composers Benjamin Britten. Britten founded the now world famous Aldeburgh music festival. Archbishop Justin Welby preached at Aldeburgh's St Peter and St Paul church - where Britten and his partner, the tenor Peter Pears, are buried - taking as his theme Britten's War Requiem which set the poems of World War 1 poet Wilfred Owen to music.
Click here to listen to an excellent sermon on the subject of human conflict.
"Life is infinitely complicated and putting God into the middle of it does not make it less so. Don’t expect easy answers because God is around. But taking God out of the picture does not make life simpler or easier either. Rather, doing that reduces life to the chaos and bitterness and evil that is all human existence in some ways,"
