Letter: A poor future that scorns the past

Sir: Where this country is going to is a far more important and interesting question than where it has come from, asserts your editorial addressing the National Trust's concern about loss of cultural material as a result of an expected 'flood' of historic houses on to the market.

In Friday's Independent (9 October) we read that fossilised dung hills are likely to help locate underground storage sites for nuclear waste. Dr Geoffrey Spaulding is reported as saying in Nuclear Engineering International: 'One of the only ways to judge what the next 10,000 years might bring is to look at what has happened over the last 20,000 years.'

It seems that the past and the future are inextricably linked after all. You have only to visit some of the UK's most advanced museums at about midday when national curriculum-bound school visits are at their height to see the two

juxtaposed.

Yours sincerely

DIANA ZEUNER

Chichester, West Sussex

8 October