Trench warfare is like a long series of drawn five-day Test matches laid end to

Trench warfare is like a long series of drawn five-day Test matches laid end to end. “Writing a history of the Great War was very like writing a history of cricket. During a lull in play I asked him if, as a historian, he had considered writing a history of cricket.”In a sense, I already have,” he said. Think about it, Diddles.”I have often thought about it, and I now wish I had asked him what on earth he meant by it.yours etcFrom Sir Ralph KneedleSir, May I endorse the foregoing? I remember once fielding in the slips beside him for the Civilisation Casuals (the cricket team which his father Lord Clark started on the proceeds of his TV series). Whereas other children learn cricket from their dads, I was taught to bowl and bat by the butler and head stableman. Until the age of fourteen I thought umpires called everyone `Sir’.

You may be surprised to learn that in many ways I had a most underprivileged background. But are they not the twin pillars of civilisation?”I am sure he was right, whatever he meant by it.yours etcFrom Lord NearboughSir, Alan Clark is often said to have been a snob, but there was more to him than that. I remember once he said to me, “You know, Diddles, on the cricket field all men are equal, at least until given out. Nowhere in the series, for instance, is cricket or sex mentioned.

From Mr George “Gubby” Trotter OBE
Sir, in all the richly deserved tributes which have poured out to my old friend Alan Clark MP, I have seen none that mentioned his very real love of cricket. He once said to me, “You know, Gubby, my father may have had a title, taste, money and a huge house, but he had very little else. If you look again at his TV series on Civilisation, you will notice that he talks only about expensive objects – his view of life was the view from Asprey’s window He avoided the finer things of life altogether. None had any creative ambition, for instance to emulate the great developers of the past and to leave behind as their monument an Edinburgh New Town or, like Thomas Cubitt, a new Belgravia.On a recent train journey in Belgium, Holland and Germany I was always seeing new housing developments in a cheerful, attractive style essentially of our own time Why won’t they build them in England?. IN THE wake of the death of the late lamented Alan Clark MP, I have received many letters of tribute to him, and think it only right to print a selection of them. Nowadays nobody knows who is behind the sprawling housing estates.
The Portsmouth Society is concerned mainly with trying to encourage good design in new building and to discourage dross.

We are continually dismayed by the standard of design of new buildings of all types but especially housing and especially the products of Housing Associations.It was sad to find that these tycoons of the building industry had only commercial ambitions. Sir: Sally Chatterton’s “Who’s the builder most worthy of house room?” (Business Review, 8 September), with the men mainly responsible for house- building, was very valuable although deeply depressing; but she didn’t ask: “Why don’t you employ good architects?”

When the New Towns were built in the 1950s, distinguished architects like Eric Lyons and Frederick Gibberd were well known to be involved in the design of the houses. Few are now willing to deal with the bad publicity involved in hosting arms shows, let alone, perhaps, the guilty consciences.
If everyone who not only wanted Britain to stop selling arms to the Indonesians, but who also wanted us to stop our other extensive dealings with regimes such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka, made it clear to the Government that they cannot continue to “deal in death” in our name – perhaps by joining our protest outside DSEi in Chertsey and Docklands – then they wouldn’t be able to get away with it for much longer.. As a result of peaceful protest the Copex private arms show has been forced to change venue three times. In 1997 more than 1,000 protesters descended on a British armed-forces-sponsored arms exhibition. Moreover, peace campaigning can be very effective, especially when it is sustained – not only in putting pressure on the Government and raising public awareness, but in the most direct cases, such as when four women disarmed an Indonesia-bound BAe Hawk jet in 1996, stopping the delivery of the weapons altogether.

Yet if it were not for the actions of thousands of ordinary people protesting against the arms trade and exposing hypocrisy, we would not be witnessing now the the Government’s backtracking on sales of Hawk jets and other military equipment to Indonesia. And the public knowledge that Robin Cook’s so-called “ethical foreign policy” consists of regularly arming other repressive regimes and fuelling human rights abuses, continues to be more than “mildly embarrassing” for the Government. DAVID AARONOVITCH, while claiming to be morally opposed to Britain’s role in the arms trade, appears to suggest that there’s little we can do to stop it. But given what’s at stake, it’s worth having a go at challenging the entrenched acceptance of violence among many young men.As Michael Massey, the director of the short film about date rape, said last week, “If it changes the attitude of just one man, then it will have been worth it.”. We still need to work for changes in policy that will bring more rapists to justice and protect women from violence. If these programmes are successful in challenging young men’s attitudes, why shouldn’t they be imitated elsewhere?No educational campaign will suddenly wipe out men’s violent behaviour.