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Letters

Wednesday, 3rd September 2008

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

Heartbeats of delight

Sir: Few would disagree with Paul Johnson’s view that prolonging the human lifespan is of little value if it merely gives us extra years of Alzheimer’s and debility (And another thing, 30 August). But we do not all live for the average span, and one reason for the increase in average age since the early 19th century has been the massive reduction in child mortality. It is difficult to believe that in his historical studies Johnson has not encountered the miseries caused by the death of beloved children. Numerous books, for example, describe the pain which Charles Darwin suffered as a result of the death of his favourite daughter Anne in 1851, and Thomas Huxley’s grief when his son Noel died of scarlet fever in 1860. Most bereaved parents, of course, have left no record of their feelings, but it is not difficult to imagine those of Murdo Matheson as he commissioned the gravestone in Kilmory churchyard, Rum, which lists five of his children who died of diphtheria within three days in September 1873. And, more positively, science surely did bring smiles and ‘heartbeats of delight’ to those children in the same era who were introduced to the aquarium tank and the wonders of the shore by the natural history books of P.H. Gosse and Charles Kingsley.

Chris Preston
Cambridge

Sir: Shortly after having a cataract operation, I read Paul Johnson’s statement that he sees ‘no evidence that all the technical knowledge we now possess has increased the sum of human happiness by one smile or a single heartbeat of delight’. My operation involved an ultrasonic probe to break up the old lens; the new one was manufactured in Fort Worth, Texas, not without significant technical knowledge of materials and optics. The operation was painless, thanks to pharmacology. Doesn’t this combination of technical knowledge allow people like me at least the delight of reading Mr Johnson’s articles?

Dr W. Pickin
Swansea

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timothy

September 5th, 2008 1:21pm

Dear Sir, I have finally received 30 August issue on the 5th September here in the Japans. How I enjoyed Ms Standing's Diary. How I did wish that her daughter had called from Simla and not Siena. Then she could have written, "It was our daughter India calling from India."

Bernard M Anderson

September 7th, 2008 3:04pm

Dear Sir,
Precipitous perhaps – Rod Liddle’s ‘What possessed McCain to take a punt at Palin’? Probably because you don’t scratch her and find an unreconstituted BBC liberal under the skin.

A child of our time

From the economic and psychological bedlam of the global downturn has emerged a particularly dangerous false dichotomy: namely, that there is somehow a choice for ministers over the next few years between economic reconstruction and the repair of Britain’s broken society, and that the government (whether Labour or Conservative) must prioritise the former at the expense of the latter.

Diary

Anne Robinson

The daughter and I spent the last few days before the American election in Arizona.

Politics

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

‘A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter drop” of money.’ So said Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Fed, in a speech about how to ward off the ‘extremely small’ chance of deflation, which he delivered in 2002.