'War Horse' widow mourns fallen soldiers

The last surviving World War I widow, Dorothy Ellis, told Daybreak the two minute silence observed on Remembrance Day "meant a lot" to her late husband, who had fought in the trenches.

Dorothy, who turns 93 today, will celebrate her birthday with cadets before laying a wreath at the Gallipoli Memorial.

Her husband, Wilfred Ellis, was friends with author Michael Morpurgo and provided the inspiration needed for his children's novel, War Horse, with stories of life before and during World War One.

Mrs Ellis explained: "Michael Morpurgo was always a friend of ours and Wilfred told him about the war - which he [Morpurgo] didn't know anything about.

"But also, we had a picture of a horse in our sitting room and together with the information that Wilfred gave him, that was the beginning of War Horse."

Dorothy was born three years after the end of the first world war, and grew up to marry a survivor of the conflict.

Her future husband, Wilfred Ellis, was shot, gassed and left for dead in the space of five hellish months in 1918.