Bernard – I listened to you speaking on Radio 4 today, and have read the Saxon books; I was interested to hear that you thought nobody had been in a shield wall these days. In fact being in the police now, in the riot unit, is very close to it! Long (Roman style?) shields have been replaced with circular ones and the training is to interlink, to ‘hold the line’ and to keep a running line, just as it would have been all those years ago. I myself have been in a unit of 5 men plus me ‘steering’ (one holds onto the belts of the men in front and acts as their ‘eyes’ so to speak) rushing into 2,000 Manchester Utd fans to snatch-out a steward who had been pulled into the block and was being beaten up. Please feel free to contact me should you so wish for a beefed-up version of events – particularly how the adrenalin high keeps you able to perform superhuman feats of strength, and how the post action slump sends you into an awful slump of fatigue. I thoroughly recommend that you attend one of the training days the various police forces run in a sort of fake town where petrol bombs etc are thrown at the serials to see for yourself how intense the experience really is. regards, Alan P, Lincolnshire (proud Saxon peasant)