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The picture from Kind Hearts and Coronets was perhaps even more appropriate than R.E. Rawles realised ("Tragedy and farce", Letters, 3 May).

The incident was based on the death in 1893 of Admiral Sir George Tryon, whose flagship HMS Victoria was rammed by the battleship of his second-in-command, Rear Admiral SirAlbert Markham: the latter was following Tryon's self-destructive orders and was exonerated by the subsequent court-martial.

Sean Neill, Senior lecturer, University of Warwick