THIS has been a particularly tough week or so for most people since that terrible bomb blast at the Manchester Arena smashed so many lives.

We will have gone through the gamut of emotions from fear to anger and back again. But, there have been opportunities to discover not only the very worst in human nature but also the very best.

While we might shed tears each time some new element of this atrocity is publicised, there is no hiding from the amazing bravery and genuine caring shown by so many to outshine the dark glow of terrorism and deluded minds.

There were so many heroes, then and after. So many brave people. The most remarkable and heartening part of it all, though, has been the wonderful defiance of a nation which refuses to let evil win.

The tens of thousands of courageous runners in the Great Manchester Run on Sunday – some wearing signs saying “We are not afraid” – demonstrated inexorably the determination of a nation never to give in.