LEST we forget, and even in 2005 it probably isn't likely, tomorrow is Remembrance Day. Derek Boorman's evocative new book on Britain's rich heritage of war memorials appears appropriately.

"I'm still moved by them, very often by the same ones," he tells the column. "If others only remember them once a year, I suppose that's what you would hope they might do."

His two previous books were also about war memorials, of the First and Second World Wars. This one celebrates - salutes, perhaps - 100 of the country's finest, from Camel Corps to Commandos, from Dornoch to the Dambusters.

It is without intended offence to the narrative to suggest that his photographs alone tell a vivid and sometimes terrible tale.

Among the most recent commemorations is the national Shot at Dawn memorial in Alrewas, Staffordshire, the blindfolded figure with hands tied behind back modelled on Pte Herbert Burden, who at 16 lied about his age to join the Northumberland Fusiliers and at 17 was executed for desertion at Ypres, without even being represented at the court martial.

Six conifers, representing the firing squad, stand in front of the statue; behind it are 306 wooden stakes bearing details of 306 British and Commonwealth soldiers executed by their own side.

Derek is also captivated by the Fusiliers' own memorial in Newcastle city centre - "one of the finest in Britain" - which includes a huge bronze of Tynesiders rushing to join the colours.

A boy carries his father's kit bag, a workman hugs his wife and baby, a soldier says farewell to his younger sister. "It must have been unbearably poignant," he says, "to those seeing it for the first time."

Newcastle's own memorial, also included in the book, was unveiled by Earl Haig in 1923 after £16,000 was raised within weeks from a "Shilling fund".

Others in the North-East include Harrogate's 75ft obelisk commemorating the 841 men and women from the town who died in the Great War and the memorial at Fountains Hall, near Ripon, in memory of 18-year-old Wren Elizabeth Vyner, killed in 1942, and of her brother Charles de Grey Vyner, missing in action when just a year older.

Derek's father and grandfathers all saw front line action. "I'd heard so much about it that when I first had time, in the late 1980s, I wanted to write something.

"Almost everything else had been really flogged, but hardly anything had been written about war memorials. There are some truly remarkable examples."

Now 73, the retired property developer and National Serviceman lives near York and still plays regular tennis - "a Last of the Summer Wine thing" - with Malcolm Huntingdon, the ex-Witton Park lad who became one of Wimbledon's top umpires.

He's photographed at the Waggoners' Reserve memorial at Sledmere Hall, near Driffield, erected as a tribute to the improbable force of 1,000 Yorkshire Wolds land workers raised and trained before the First World War by Sir Mark Sykes, the squire. Casualties were heavy.

The series of carvings includes depictions of Germans burning a church and killing a female civilian, which brought protests from the German embassy. "Unsurprisingly," says Derek, "they were told to go away."

His foreword has been written by 92-year-old Lord Deedes, the former Daily Telegraph editor and Second World War veteran. "The memorials must stand in good repair," he concludes, "a reminder to later, more forgetful and careless generations of the human cost of total war."

THE invitation embossed with Henry Youngman's soothing aphorism - "When I read about the evils of drinking, I give up drinking" - the Pens and Lens Club held its annual extravagance at St James' Park, Newcastle, last Friday.

Broadly it's for national newspaper men, mostly retired, who've covered the North-East. The column is a special guest, some would say a poor relation.

We are the generation who remember when a Hack was simply a cough sweet, when a virus was the flu and when a three and a quarter inch floppy was something you really didn't want to discuss.

Only one of those present was over 80, only one had had a liver transplant. Probably there was no connection.

Two of the region's most celebrated inky tradesmen had died since the last gathering. Roy Maddison, whose autobiographical account of the joys of weekly newspaper editing we reviewed a couple of years ago, was 69.

Brian Park, 75, began on the Whitley Bay Guardian (and Seaside Chronicle) and became one of Britain's most renowned investigative journalists, particularly infuriating the Moonies in the UK when with the Daily Mail.

He'd begun his national newspaper career as the Daily Express's man at Catterick Camp, new meaning to both military medium and close confinement. On his first day, it's reckoned, he filed 33 stories. Some of us don't write that many in a month. Utterly indefatigable, Brian could go several days without sleep, though rather less without 20 Capstan and a bottle of whisky.

As ever the do was hugely convivial, though too many check their mobiles every five minutes - what do they expect to find there, the secret of the Dead Sea Scrolls? - and too many abandon drinks unfinished.

At such a journalistic jamboree, perhaps the best tale came from Shildon lad Colin Randall, now the Telegraph's man in Paris (and presently with no need to look very far for a story).

Colin's an ardent Sunderland fan. A colleague in the French capital, despatched a couple of weeks ago to write a feature in Lourdes, is equally passionate about Portsmouth.

Both struggling, one played t'other that weekend, Sunderland contriving to lose 4-1 after leading at half time.

Swift over the wires, or whatever it is they have nowadays, flashed a message from the south: "Three days in Lourdes, and a bloody miracle already."

AMONG others at the Pens and Lens was the magnificently moustached Jim Merrington, former public relations director at Scottish and Newcastle Brewery and the man credited with making Newcastle Brown Ale a global brand.

Now retired, Jim lives in Brancepeth, south of Durham and has used his sharp communication skills in the appeal to rebuild the historic St Brandon's church in the village, destroyed by fire.

On Sunday he was recording a Radio 4 programme about the "Father" Willis organ, bought in 1883 by the Commissioners in Lunacy for St Luke's church at Winterton Hospital, Sedgefield, and now restored in St Brandon's. Durham Cathedral's organ is a Father Willis, too.

As ever, Jim spotted the angle. "It's about the Philistines rebuilding the church," he said.

ANOTHER musical note, last week's column on Laughing Policewoman Jenny Wren's 100th birthday mentioned that her daughter Mona was named after a music hall song of that name. Marie Marsh in Richmond seeks words and music. Can anyone help?

...and finally, whatever it is that beans means was rather lost on the Durham reader who rang about the promotion in Tuesday's paper for Branston's new brand. It described the sauce as "tomatoier," beneath which the computer has every right to insert an indignantly wavy line.

But if they're not tomatoier, can anyone suggest a grammatical alternative?

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Published: ??/??/2004