It was a fleeting moment of friendship across the battlelines which now stands as testament to the unwavering spirit of human kinship that not even savage warfare could extinguish.

But newly discovered letters sent from the trenches of the Western Front have cast new light on the famous Christmas Day truce of 1914, when the guns of First World War fell silent and sworn enemies put hostilities aside to play a game of football.

The previously unpublished letters sent by Major John Hawksley, of the Royal Field Artillery, to his sister Muriel at her home in Coatham Mundeville, near Darlington, show that not everyone on the frontline agreed with the unofficial ceasefire....