In the hour or so before Prime Minister's Questions today, MPs were invited to another event. In one of the Commons' committee rooms, the National Heritage Memorial Fund announced it was donating half a million pounds to save the collection of Siegfried Sassoon's private diaries and pocket notebooks which were compiled while serving on the Western Front.
The collection also includes an autographed manuscript of 'A Soldier's Declaration' which when it was first read out at Westminster in 1917 caused a national storm. Sassoon claimed that the war was being prolonged by those who had the power to end it. Ninety years on his statement was again read out loud - by the writer and author Michael Morpurgo. Michael kindly came in to read it again for PM.
Tony Pilgrim is head of scheduling and planning at Radio 4 - he's currently working on attachment at PM
- The donation was covered in The Times and The Cambridge News.
- Thanks to the executors of G.T. Sassoon (deceased) for the picture.
