OUT walking last Thursday I heard the skylark for the first time this year. It’s a joyful sound that tells you winter is as good as over, even though there may be a few fits and starts before you can safely welcome the spring.

Listening to it, you are reminded of the hauntingly poignant beauty of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ tone poem, The Lark Ascending, surely one of the most heart-rendingly lovely compositions in all music.

The unutterable sadness of the piece seems to flow from the contrast between the indescribable beauty of the English countryside in those days (1916) and the sacrifice of countless thousands of precious English lives then going on in the trenches.

Maybe, too, both the music and the skylark herself are pleading with us to turn away from false values, such as the pursuit of money for its own sake, in favour of a return to the true values of old England: things such as loyalty, sentiment and integrity.

Tony Kelly, Crook, Co Durham.