Sir, Diarmid O’Sullivan (letter, Jan 30) is incorrect when he states that: “Western countries have been trying to rearrange the Middle East by military force since the early 19th century.”
In fact it is 1095; the year that Pope Urban II requested a crusade against Islam was the first instance of this. Louis IX spent six times France’s income during one crusade. Perhaps we should just be grateful that Tony Blair is not spending six times Britain’s income — £3 trillion.
However, I do believe that for nearly a millennium we have interfered with this area. Life started in Mesopotamia; if life ever ends, I suspect it will also end in Mesopotamia.
LIAM HALLIDAY
Reading
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Sir, In the interest of historical accuracy may I offer the following correction to Graham Stewart’s piece, “God and the trouser press: an old novelty” (Feb 4), in which he refers to Auberon Waugh’s 1970 article “Allah Catcher” as having “incited an angry mob to burn down the British Council in Rawalpindi”.
It is true that a small crowd of demonstrators turning out from the local mosque entered the library with the evident purpose of doing some mischief. It was Good Friday and the sole occupants of the premises at that time were a chowkidar and an outside contractor who happened to be poised aloft effecting some repairs. As the invading demonstration busied itself removing books from the shelves below, the contractor became alarmed for his own safety, balanced as he was on a rickety, home-made stepladder which would have been precarious at the best of times.
In a panic he shouted at them that he was an outsider and had nothing to do with the British Council and suggested that they take their demonstration elsewhere. Whereupon they decamped in orderly fashion to make a token pyre of a few books in the courtyard outside.
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As the first British Council employee to arrive on the scene in response to a report that the library was under attack, I was surprised to find nothing but a slightly shaken chowkidar, a cross but relieved contractor and a small, smouldering heap of ashes.
That an event of such controlled and modest proportions can nonetheless make its mark in journalistic annals offers, perhaps, a moral and a model for demonstrators of today.
MICHAEL WARD
Cambridge