[uckwash]

Hi Steve.

You may not have said as much (that I was lazy), but there's an inference, reinforced in your 2nd point:

'that (my) comment smacks of being the refuge of the lazy'

Peter, I was refering to:

'I accept that you will only be as good as your sources but the trick is to identify those you can rely upon and those that are best ignored. In order to make that choice you may well need to access surviving contemporary primary sources to satisfy yourself of the actual facts. It has been my experience that these sterile reports are often infinitely preferable to previously published accounts or even eye-witness accounts'.

The fact that were all now jumping in to shoot me down, reinforces my notion that (I am told is wrong headed) I am facing a bit of a 'closed shop' here.

Hopefully Groucho Marx will have relaxed his new world order sufficiently for me to get some sort of response, by the time I post my next enquiry on here.

Dave