When Bernadette Russell decided to perform one good deed every day for a year, it made a difference to the world around her but also had a big impact on her own life

It has been nearly 14 years since a chance encounter with a stranger in a post office changed Bernadette Russell’s life forever. The date was Thursday 18 August 2011. For weeks, on the news, as a series of riots broke out across cities in England, Russell had been inundated with images of young people in hoodies looting, pillaging and setting buildings on fire.

Now, standing in front of her at her local post office counter in Deptford, south London, was a young man in a hoodie.

Across the country men and women have cared for the resting places of their enemy’s fallen, finding peace and hope

For some, tending the graves was an act of reconciliation. For others, it was about acknowledging shared losses and shared grief.

Thousands of Germans who died in Britain during the first and second world wars were laid to rest in local graveyards. British people tended these graves for decades, even laying flowers and wreaths for their former foes.