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Sir: Today, in Ipswich, young girl cadets were selling poppies. I bought one. ‘Would you like a pin to go with it?’ ‘Yes please.’ ‘We can’t actually give you a pin because of health and safety rules; but you’re welcome to pick one out of this card yourself.’ A piece of cardboard with lines of pins embedded in it was duly proffered. I thought of several sarcastic observations; but these were overwhelmed by a mixture of exasperation and sadness, and I walked off still silent. It seems that those commemorated by the poppies gave their lives for an England that has ceased to exist. How fortunate that they cannot see what became of their country.
M. Tinney
Laxfield, Suffolk
Unrecognisable birds
Sir: I write this on a sunny Sydney afternoon, not far from Hunters Hill, listening to the shrieks, carols, twitterings and scoldings of the local bird population that now inhabits inner suburbs. I don’t know who gave Matthew Parris the information about Australian birds he uses in his article (Another voice, 8 November) but I found it passing strange. Rosellas come in two varieties in Sydney: crimson and Eastern. No such thing as a ‘scarlet Eastern’. Currawongs — large corvids — could by no means be described as having a ‘melodious, haunting call’. The words ‘loud’ and ‘raucous’ spring immediately to mind. The Australian magpie, far from being four times the size of European magpies, is roughly the same size. Its call could never be described as ‘chilling’: it is a lovely, melodious, gurgling sound that reminds me of Hopkins’s memorable description of the skylark’s ‘rinse and ring’. I agree with Parris about the kookaburra’s extraordinary call. It too is lovely — but not when you have a fishpond.
Alison Pressley
Balmain, Sydney
A man of many parts
Sir: Sinclair McKay gives an excellent introduction to William Le Queux as the forgotten pioneer of the modern spy novel (‘A quantum of respect’, 1 November). Also neglected but of contemporary interest are his strangely prophetic novels of terrorist activity, including The Terror of the Air, which in 1920 describes an unexpected air attack on New York in broad daylight, and the recently reprinted novel The Bomb Makers. A recent biography, William Le Queux, Master of Mystery, reveals him, as well as being a novelist, as a self-proclaimed spy, amateur detective, wireless pioneer and more. Like all successful popular fiction writers he had a finger in every pie and on the pulse of the nation. He deserves to be better known.
Chris Patrick
by email
Gordo and the Golden Rules
Sir: Why should anyone be surprised (‘No fiscal Holy Grail’, 8 November) that Gordo discarded the Golden Rules? Have they forgotten that HM Treasury discarded our gold bullion too?
Peter Hambro
By email
Black and white qualities?
Sir: In his, to my mind, patronising remarks about Barack Obama (‘his blackness seems skin deep’) Charles Moore seems to regard ‘the intelligence, the historical sweep and the ability to understand more than one perspective’ as particularly white qualities (The Spectator’s Notes, 8 November). It does not seem to have occurred to him that if these qualities are ‘the opposite of those of the ghetto’, they are also the opposite of those of the Republican vice-presidential candidate and, it seems, a fair body of her supporters. Does he think Mrs Palin’s whiteness is also skin deep?
Peter Weitzman
London W11
Not the real Italy
Sir: I feel sorry for Lisa Hilton (‘La dolce vita is a myth’, 8 November). Milan is not really Italy: the Romans called the region Cisalpine Gaul, and all those years governed by Austria have made it like a Northern European town: with atrocious weather and a work ethic unusual in the rest of the country.
Here in Umbria Italians eat out of doors most summer days (the reason they don’t in Milan is because it is either foggy or dense with mosquitoes). Good wine is £1 a litre, plonk a bit less, and yet you never see drunken youths fighting and puking. The police don’t harass the law-abiding citizen, there are almost no CCTV cameras outside football grounds, and the councils don’t hide cameras in the rubbish bins.
There is a different rhythm to life in Italy (certainly true with the postal service) and to enjoy the place you have to accept it. Here people do meet and talk in the squares, making their evening passeggiata, and my loggia is dappled even in November. It’s fairly dolce.
Tim Hedges
Panicale, Italy
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