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Sir: Martin Vander Weyer (Any Other Business, 31 December) draws our attention to the continuing lack of progress in putting Battersea power station to good use. The Victorians would have had no such scruples, had the opportunity been presented to them. With its four wonderful chimneys, it is splendidly set up as a central crematorium. The walls would provide ample storage space for urns, and the customers could be brought in by barge, obviating the wasteful need for travel to Golders Green and other distant parts.
John Buckingham
London N1
Sir: Melissa Kite (‘On the wrong track’, 31 December) is right to point out the disaster that awaits Cameron if the high-speed rail link goes ahead. And this would be as nothing compared with the effect of the proposed changes to our planning laws. No one will forgive a party that ruins our unique rural heritage. Once our countryside has been despoiled, it can never be restored.
Antony Snow
Wiltshire
Sir: Pity Philip Hensher (Books, 31 December), unable to enjoy release from his institution for his novel about Nainsukh. If he had succeeded in his application to teach on the creative writing course at the University of East Anglia in 2007, he would have been able to take advantage of the generous provision for scholarly leave here. He might even have edited Body of Work: 40 Years of Creative Writing at UEA during his leave, and spared us the Nainsukh. But that pleasure was mine, as was the job which Mr Hensher sought. He has been laying down the poison ever since. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if he had been awarded the post instead of me. But in truth I cannot comment on his ability, as I have not read any of his novels. From his attacks on me, which date from us sitting awaiting our interviews together, all I can surmise is that he is a poor loser.
Giles Foden
Professor of Creative Writing
University of East Anglia
Sir: One should stop being surprised to discover naivety even among the most learned. Lord Rees, the Astronomer Royal (‘Thinking Space’, 17/24 December), is ready to believe that there could be an another, undetected universe ‘just a millimetre away from us’. But he still clings to clumping old pre-quantum materialism to quench any hope of life after death, because ‘our thoughts are linked to physical events in our brains’. Perhaps, but how? He doesn’t know. But unless he can describe how in precisely materialistic terms, then he cannot know whether our thoughts — what we usually call the mind — can exist independently of our brains.
Revd Dr Peter Mullen
London EC1
Sir: My old friend Jamie Dettmer (Letters, 19 November), who refers to me as ‘Mr Farrell’, speaks of my ‘deep ignorance of the damage Berlusconi’s rule has done economically, politically and morally’ to Italy. He thus also accuses the majority of Italians who voted him in as prime
minister three times of being deeply ignorant. Mamma mia! I thought that Jamie, my former Sunday Telegraph colleague whom I recall chiefly for his slightly sinister black leather driving gloves, was somewhere in America doing something for an NGO. Now up he pops in Italy.
I wrote that Berlusconi remains Italy’s best hope of cutting its sovereign debt and liberalising its uncompetitive workplace. So my question to Jamie is this: if not Berlusconi, who? The non-elected economist and former Euro commissar, Mario Monti, now imposed on Italy by Merkozy as part of the doomed attempt to save the euro? Surely not. Monti the tecnico is already bogged down in meaningless tinkering. And lo, the spread between Italian and German bonds remains stuck in the default zone.
Nicholas Farrell
Forlì, Romagna
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