But now, she says, the gleaming images of her + kale usually conceal a more complex reality.

So instead we offer veterans our praise and appreciation, and in so doing reflect a poor understanding of the morally complex reality of military service.

In an odd pact between journalists who want to write sensation, and readers who want to buy it, we choose cartoonish half-truths over complex reality.

Not even the most labyrinthine novel could compete with the complex reality of each family's experience there.

But only a few millimetres below the surface, there's a more complex reality.