Impenetrable barracks

SIR – In 1979, when I was in the Army, I was invited for a drink in the officers’ mess at Victoria Barracks in Ballater (“Moment the Queen stepped in to thwart the kidnapping of her cousin by the IRA”, report, May 3).

Before entering the building my host pointed at a downstairs window and told me that the glass was bulletproof. He then handed me a rock and invited me to put his assertion to the test. He was correct. Although my attempts to break the glass failed I still managed to dent three separate panes, for which I soon received a bill from the Ministry of Defence for £468.61p (over £2,000 in today’s money).

I visited the mess more than 20 years later and saw that the window panes had not been replaced. On asking one of the officers how the damage had occurred, he told me that once, when the Queen was dining there, an IRA sniper had tried to shoot her but luckily failed “because the glass is bullet-proof ”.

Jeremy Burton

Radford, Oxfordshire