A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 18th August 1999.

Mr Charlton’s observation about the Maritime Museum is only too predictable following the announcement last year that under a new director the collection was to be “reorganised”.

Mr Charlton might also have mentioned the absence of any reference to the Royal Navy’s anti-slavery patrols, maintained for nigh on 100 years in the Indian and Atlantic oceans.  History knows no comparable action by one country acting for so long on behalf of all to relieve suffering.

The new displays at the museum are all of a piece with other attempts to deprive the British people of any aspect of their history in which they can take justifiable pride.  The suborning of the school history curriculums is a current example of the attempt to deprive our children of their national identity.

Now here is a subject for a doctoral thesis: why has Britain created in so many people educated in the arts since the Sixties a mind-set which by distortion, omission, wrenching out of context and disproportionate emphasis, seeks to belittle and disparage our forebears’ achievements?

What, incidentally, have the events at Amritsar in 1919 got specifically to do with maritime affairs?  Like the mythology of Bloody Sunday, it only provides Britain’s enemies with another stick with which to beat us.