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Odile Taliani
Rome
Never too old
Sir: I’m appalled to read that Peregrine Worsthorne’s ‘favourite travel tour agent’ felt he was too old to cope with Istanbul’s hills (Diary, 14 August). How sad to miss a visit to one of the most enchanting cities in the world because you might puff a little. I’m in my eighties and expect to go on what will be my 43rd visit next month. He should not be put off. The good public transport system and inexpensive taxis can help on the steepest hills, enabling him to enjoy walking by the Bosphorus and the Marmara and seeing the many art galleries, museums and views in every direction.
Sally Mustoe
London N6
Sir: Peregrine Worsthorne perceives the emergence, just in time, of a modern version of the English gentleman. Might his first mission be to ride to the rescue (on a new hire-scheme bicycle, of course) of the English lady, a similarly endangered creature?
Mrs Serena Moore
Charlbury, Oxon
Shooting snobbery
Sir: Further to Max Hastings’s piece, it was not only cockney tenants of grouse moors who were mocked 150 years ago (‘The guns of August’, 14 August). I spent my youth in a Victorian fishing lodge on the edge of a lake in the West of Ireland. Everything was damp, including the ancient bound copies of The Field which I was reduced to reading. One issue, from 1855, scornfully claimed that a certain maharajah indulged in the ‘low practice’ of driving grouse. This provoked a letter in the following issue from the maharajah’s head keeper, who begged to report: ‘All His Highness’s birds were shot to dogs, in a gentlemanly and sportsmanlike manner.’
Tim Roberts
Bracknell
Jewish identity
Sir: Perhaps Venetia Thompson has never heard of Sartre’s observation that ‘a Jew is one whom other men consider a Jew’ (‘How Jewish are the Milibands?’, 14 August). Whatever kind of Jew — atheist, secular, non-practising, ultra-orthodox, friend of Israel or critic, Ashkenazi, Sephardi, North African — all are, irrefutably, Jews. And the identity of diaspora Jews has nothing to do with Israel. The American experience, as discussed by Peter Beinart in the New York Review of Books, is that young Jews are increasingly alienated by older Jews’ unconditional support of Israel and from religious practice. But they remain Jews. And however the Miliband brothers want to ‘position’ themselves, they too remain Jews and their views on Israel will not alter that irremovable fact.
We still consider Disraeli a Jew even though he embraced Christianity. As the German Jews discovered — and many others before them — there is no exit.
Gerry Lewis
Hampstead (Jew-ish)
Sir: Venetia Thompson expects the next British PM to have an uncritical and enduring political affiliation to the State of Israel, simply on account of his accident of birth. Would objection to this view from British subjects of any other racial lineage automatically define them as ‘anti-Semitic’?
Jason Robertson
Sheringham, Norfolk
My mistake
Sir: I would like to apologise to all those Spitfire pilots and their relatives who did not go to public schools. Judging from the number of angry calls and letters the magazine has received, my claim that the Battle of Britain was won by England’s ‘clapped out’ ruling class is not entirely accurate. It seems that in 1940 there were plenty of state school boys — as well as Czechs, Poles, Canadians, etc — who were every bit as good at shooting down Germans as posh boys.
Toby Young
London W3
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