Churchill sent out an order: Forget about the Stop Lines &ndash

Churchill sent out an order: Forget about the Stop Lines – There Won’t be Any German Tanks Coming. From that moment, the tank traps, pillboxes and tank bollards lay silent and forgotten, waiting for blackberries to grow on them and for their historian to come along. That man is Major Green (no first name, apparently) and his Stop Line Green, though only 36 pages long, is my military history of the year Book of the year, probably
More from Miles Kington. A fire at a British research laboratory in the Antarctic has dealt a significant blow to research into the world’s understanding of climate change. Scientists prepared yesterday to restart studies in the harsh environment around the South Pole.The British Antarctic Survey (BAS), which analyses climate change and its effects on marine life off the Antarctic Peninsula, said a rebuilt Bonner Laboratory would be fully operational by the end of 2003 but the fire had interrupted its extensive research programme.Up to 80 staff work at the station over the Antarctic summer but scientists are concerned that a year’s enforced break may have major implications for long-running monitoring programmes that had been going for up to six years.

The station is considered to be vital to understanding the effects of pollution and global warming. Evidence of climate changes during the past 500,000 years is found by analysing the thick ice sheets of the Antarctic.Professor Paul Rodhouse, the head of the biological sciences division of BAS, said: “If this season is one in which a major trend takes off or is pivotal in some way, clearly it would be more difficult to interpret what went on. We won’t know that until we have seen the time series in a year or two.”A winter staff of 21 were at the base when the fire started in a small loft above a boot room at the laboratory, away from the main accommodation block.The staff were unable to control the fire but managed to rescue some data from the burning building. Exploding gas bottles finished the destruction but nobody was hurt.The burnt-out laboratory was buried under six feet of snow when a fire investigation team examined the remains in October.

Samples brought back to Britain confirmed an electrical fault was the likely cause.A five-strong clean-up team will arrive at Rothera in early January and will repair foundations for the new laboratory.The BAS, based in Cambridge, has set up an internal inquiry to look into how the fire started and the investigation team yesterday reported its interim findings. The director of BAS, Professor Chris Rapley, said a report in the New Year would reveal if anyone was to blame for the fire. He added: “Obviously we did not build and design the buildings for them to burn down but it did and there was something wrong.”. Marathon fisheries talks were still going on in Brussels in a bid to agree hefty cuts in permitted catches next year. UK Sport yesterday unveiled its Anti-Doping report for 2000-2001 which included 5,406 tests covering 50 sports including football, rugby, cricket, Olympic and Paralympic sports. Only two per cent of the 94 trangressors had committed offences that were serious enough to be reported to their sport’s governing body for action. A further 54 were for stimulants, with the vast majority for prescribed substances for competitors suffering illness or allergies such as asthma.The effects of events cancelled as a result of the foot-and-mouth epidemic and bad weather meant that the number of tests conducted were slightly lower than on the previous year, but four out of every 10 tests were conducted out of competition, ensuring that competitors were never sure about when or where they would be tested.Sir Rodney Walker, chairman of UK Sport, said: “The vast majority of UK athletes are clean and a credit to their sports.”He added, however, “There is some satisfaction because the results are not getting worse, but it is only because they are conducting a vigorous programme.”.

Some of those who figure in Nick Skelton’s autobiography, Only Falls and Horses (£18.95, Greenwater Publishing), will find this book a far from pleasant read. One imagines that Ted Edgar, his former manager and mentor to whom he first went as a 15-year-old schoolboy, will detest it. He does not, however, seem to look back on those years with much joy “Ted always referred to me as ‘that kid’… He gave me the dirtiest, messiest jobs on the yard, jobs that the grooms wouldn’t have done.