Mark Knopfler

The second digital single from Mark’s Get Lucky album will be Remembrance Day/Piper To The End. This single will be released on the 9th of November and proceeds will go to the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal, a UK charity providing support to the serving and ex-service community and their dependents. Proceeds from the US release will go to a similar charity in the United States (details to be confirmed). Hostilities during the First World War ceased at the 11th hour of the11th day of the 11th month of 1918 and this day is designated Remembrance Day (aka. Armistice Day).

The second track of the new single has personal significance for Mark: “‘Piper To The End’ is for my uncle Freddie, Lance Corporal Frederick John Laidler, a piper of the 1st Battalion, Tyneside Scottish, The Black Watch, RHR, who carried his pipes into action and was killed with them at Ficheux, near Arras, on the 20th of May, 1940, aged 20.”

For the past two years, the Royal British Legion has organised an event called Silence in the Square which aims to achieve a re-instatement of the traditional two minute silence held at 11 am on the 11th of November in remembrance of the fallen in the two twentieth-century World Wars and other conflicts. Last year, the event drew 10,000 participants for a very moving ceremony involving performances, readings and an invitation to the public to scatter poppies on the water of the fountains in central London’s Trafalgar Square.

Mark will perform Remembrance Day in Trafalgar Square shortly before 11 am next Wednesday, 11th November, 2009.