In 1977, the High Council, made up of the most senior leaders of the Salvation Army, elected him General.He published a number of books in retirement including an autobiography, The Gate and the Light (1984), With Christ at the Table (1991) and Occupied Manger – Unoccupied Tomb (1994). In his earlier days in Canada he had published What Hath God Wrought?: the history of the Salvation Army in Canada 1882-1914 (1952). He was made a freeman of the City of London and in 1982 was appointed to the Order of Canada. His gifts were readily recognised by the Rotary Club of London when he was chosen as its President.Brown was in every way a Christian gentleman of transparent integrity. Throughout his career he demonstrated versatility as speaker, writer, musician, administrator and visionary. In spite of rising to the topmost appointments in the Salvation Army he exercised his positive leadership with graciousness and sensitivity.

He also possessed the ability to draw out from people their particular contribution which enhanced their service in the world-wide movement in which Arnold Brown had himself found such fulfilment and spiritual satisfaction.Stanley Cottrill. According to a note once prepared by the BBC's Religious Affairs Department, the Thought For The Day slot on the Today programme is an opportunity to "reflect from a perspective of religious faith on the sort of issues, topics and people with which the Today programme deals". But all too often, the reflections border on the trite and the item merely provides an opportunity for a quick snooze before the velvety tones of Brian Perkins deliver the headlines at eight o'clock. And one obvious way to do so would be to open it up to stimulating contributions from atheists as well as the bishops, rabbis and imams that we usually hear.

The BBC should act on the letter sent to that effect by more than 100 public figures. Indeed, discrimination against non-believers would be an apt subject for the first of the new-style Thoughts.. When two of the most respected education specialists in the land call into question the value of one of the benchmarks of our education system, we should take notice. Professors Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam have found that A-level grades are not an especially reliable guide to a student's performance at university.

They conclude that universities might consider introducing a supplementary or even different method of determining whom to admit. But they will be troubling to the universities, which now have reason to doubt whether the students who make the grade are those who would most benefit from a university education.The professors' work bears out a long-standing, but unproved, suspicion that performance in public examinations may not be the best predictor of an individual's academic success. The usual reason cited is that exams are an artificial measure; some are good at them, some are not – and so those who are not find themselves doubly penalised by a system that rests solely on formal exams.The professors go further, saying that the exam process itself contains too many variables to make the resulting grades reliable as a measure of a pupil's ability. These include the mood of the pupil on the day, which examiner marks the paper and which part of the syllabus the questions relate to. The same pupil, they say, may perform better or worse from one day to the next, depending on these factors. Taking their own establishment, King's College London, as an example, they say that only one-third of the best A-level performers were still at the top at the end of their first year at college.Now, it is a well-known fact (among students, if not their professors) that some of the highest fliers are insufficiently challenged by first-year courses and choose to coast. Others may simply be tired, after years of striving after top grades at school, and concerned to pursue the myriad other opportunities that universities offer.If a comparable discrepancy between A-level grades and university grades can be proved up to and including graduation, however, there would be grounds for reconsidering the usefulness of A-levels as the prime indicator of further success.