The Ministry of Defence is a frustrating organisation, secretive, slow to change, often hidebound by process. In one regard, however, the department is always 110 per cent and reaching for the stars: the relentless positivity of its press office.

It is not unreasonable to sense the Panglossian hand of the MoD press office behind a recent story in the Times, for which the paper’s New York correspondent, Will Pavia, went to woodlands outside Sandhurst. Here he observed elements of the Household Cavalry on exercise, in slightly surprising circumstances which he summed up elegantly:

The soldiers were taking part in an exercise with a personnel carrier found to be capable of moving stealthily through rough, wooded terrain while emitting only a modest infra-red heat signature. It is called a horse.

The soldiers were taking part in an exercise with a personnel carrier found to be capable of moving stealthily through rough, wooded terrain while emitting only a modest infra-red heat signature. It is called a horse.

We are not yet quite out of living memory of mounted warfare

We are not yet quite out of living memory of mounted warfare

It was an exercise only the British Army could describe as ‘innovative’ and ‘cutting-edge’. Soldiers from the Life Guards and the Blues and Royals........

© The Spectator