As each new year dawns, it has long been customary to indulge in rhetorical debate about the weighty concept of ‘peace’. In the many annual speeches by politicians, the peace metaphor is an imperative to suit their populist interests. On television the issue of peace has its seasonal climax. News and entertainment programmes are shaped by it, musical tunes repeat year after year with peace as their refrain, and feature films are shown again and again in which a peaceful ‘happy ending’ is celebrated.