In fact, the inner tent sticking to your face as you lie down was a real problem with this model, and the six-footers in the party saw at once that they couldn’t, as Ashley said, “get myself, a friend of same size and two backpacks in here”.****STORMSHIELD 400pounds 199.99, 3.3kg, pitching time 17 minutesThis cool-looking, blue and green geodesic dunnel (cross between a dome and a tunnel) tent has an interesting triangulated structure which is more rigid and therefore capable of taking a load, “such as snow”, so you can tell it’s a serious four-season tent. The downside of this system, however, is that though the tent was “quite easy to put up, there’s a lot of fiddling with the pegs and tension straps afterwards to get it right,” said Ashley, who agreed with Jon Chandler that these were “yet more straps to get entangled in at three in the morning. But he still thought that “for the dextrously imbecilic, it would take a lifetime.” For older campers who like their comfort and are not so price-constrained, the Biscay would be a minimum for “a couple trolling down to the south of France,” Robert Hughes thought, or it would sleep four if two were young children.***VANGO MICRO 3pounds 199.99, 3.1kg, pitching time 13 minutesThis Scottish-made, four-season mountain tent was one of the more serious varieties tested, and was praised by Ashley Gawthorp as “a good product, solid and for the money quite cheap.” Its sturdiness is largely due to Vango’s patented tension bands, which pull on the tent hoops inside, making it immovable even in strong winds. Nick Allen noted that “the toggles make the inner tent erection a doddle, but the guy ropes were rigged incorrectly, so if you didn’t know how to re-tie them, you’d never get it right.” Having been shown by Nick how to erect this “stately home of tents”, Tony Tsai claimed that he would be able to put it up in future as long as he had the help of another person. This may well be true, though the panel felt that five people sleeping cheek by jowl in the inner compartment would lead to murder or divorce or both. “People who go to dog shows keep their six dogs dry in the living-room, and bikers put their motorbikes under the porch,” said a spokeswoman cheerfully.

In any case Lichfield – last of the pure English tent-makers – insists that this palatial, green and burgundy tent with a large porch and side canopy, which allegedly sleeps five, is what most people use. “I don’t know what this is for,” he said, “unless it’s to throw in the back of the station wagon and go fishing. Anyway, Americans aren’t good at making small, lightweight things like tents.”***LICHFIELD BISCAYpounds 370, 16kg, pitching time 30 minutesPerhaps we weren’t very specific in our request for the sort of lightweight tent ordinary people go away with at weekends. There’s lots of room inside for rucksacks and dirty pots, and you could sit and play cards in it at a pinch. But it is also “guy rope city”, which means lots to trip over in the dark and more ground space required for pitching – not so good at a festival. The tent’s weight (a little too heavy for backpackers) caused Nick Allen to puzzle over its market.

Ashley Gawthorp complained that the instructions were naff; they start off with a diagram that pertains to another tent. You only realise later that the written instructions tell you something different. Ashley was mollified by the “neat assembly routine” which involves putting the poles up alone, then clipping the flysheet on to it, instead of the more conventional method of threading the poles through. Its redeeming feature is that the inner tent of mosquito net is self-standing and so could be used alone, but nobody advises this in England; “it always rains in the middle of the night when you do that,” said Jon Chandler.***COLEMAN DAKOTApounds 200, 3.6kg, pitching time 20 minutesThis two-person, two-door, dome tent in blue with orange trim has a valance at the bottom which makes it look “like a medieval helmet” according to Nick Allen. The valance is “quite a clever feature, because if it’s wet and muddy it will keep the rain out,” said Jon Chandler. “And if the ground is so hard you can’t get the pegs in, then you can just put some rocks on it,” added Anna MacLellan. That left Robert Hughes, Tony Tsai and myself, complete novices who, left alone in a remote field, would have wound ourselves up in the tents and slept under the stars.**KARRIMOR BALTORO 2-MAN TUNNEL TENTpounds 180, 2.6kg, pitching time 10 minutesKarrimor describes this nylon coffin as a “spacious tunnel arch tent, designed to achieve maximum weight to volume ratio in an aerodynamic design.” Its low profile makes it impervious to wind and Anna MacLellan put it up in 10 minutes flat: “It would be brilliant if you were hillwalking, where every ounce counts and you just wanted it to sleep in,”she said.

It has “great little clips”, like the ones used on rucksacks, to attach the flysheet The drawbacks, however, were numerous. The tent is claustrophobic for two, impossibly hot and with no headroom. “You couldn’t exactly sit in here and have a pow-wow with your mates,” she added. Nick Allen thought the tent was “a hideous colour – it looks like a giant sunflower – but I suppose mountain rescue would see you.” Ashley Gaw-thorp pointed out that you certainly couldn’t get your backpack under the extension and there was nothing to hold the door open, “which would drive you crazy,” though “with a degree in astrophysics, you could figure out how to take it off altogether”. What could be more seductive than to kill in order to put an end to all killings? This utopia is so alluring that it is a wonder the human race has been able to survive it at all. Certainly genocide enlists lower motives than the longing for utopia.

The men with the machetes may have no utopia in mind higher than at last possessing their neighbour’s farm or property. It might seem better to abandon the word altogether, were it not that the crime it describes continues to exist.The impulse to commit genocide is ancient. The list of tribes which have been exterminated may be as long as the list of animal and plant species which we have rendered extinct This exterminatory impulse is much misunderstood. It is actually a kind of longing for utopia, a blood sacrifice in the worship of an idea of paradise.