Letters: Sir Richard Body had a strong sense of history

Giles Oakley writes: On the one occasion I met the Tory MP Sir Richard Body he made a great impression. In 1987 I was interviewing him for a BBC2 Open Space documentary entitled Aggro Chemicals presented by self-taught scientist and campaigning organic dairy farmer Mark Purdey.Sir Richard supported Mark in his principled refusal to comply with a Ministry of Agriculture order to apply an organic phosphate-based compound on his cattle to prevent a hypothetical infestation of warble fly. Mark, preferring his own organic treatment, took the matter all the way to the high court, and won. Continue reading...