Transports of delight
Sir: I would have taken Andrew Neil’s criticism of our transport system (‘Our transport system is a joke’, 10 May) more seriously had it not been so disingenuous.
I understand the frustrations faced by rail passengers when events beyond their control conspire to delay or cancel planned journeys, but it is wrong to assume that a bad experience — particularly on a Sunday — is typical of the modern British railways. To make an objective judgment of the railways’ success, it is necessary to leave behind old assumptions that ignore how much the railways have improved.
Performance is higher today than for the last seven years. We have one of the youngest train fleets in Europe. Britain’s first dedicated high-speed rail line is now open and demand for rail travel has never been higher. Engineering works on the West Coast Main Line at weekends and holiday periods this year — the cause of Mr Neil’s delayed journey — are necessary in order to achieve the service improvements and higher capacity that we all want to see on that route from the end of this year.
And while I can understand his outrage at the price of his first-class ticket, is he suggesting the government intervenes in the market to subsidise the fares of business people and journalists using public money?
Tom Harris MP
Rail Minister, House of Commons, London SW1
Have a heart
Sir: At the risk of upsetting a fellow Oxonian’s sensibilities, Paul Johnson (And another thing, 10 May) seems to be mistaken in writing about the heart of Le Roi Soleil (or at any rate a French king) ending up in the stomach of a ‘Cambridge professor of the rougher sort’. It was William Buckland, reader of Mineralogy and Geology at Oxford and subsequently Canon of Christchurch and Dean of Westminster, to whom Augustus Hare ascribed that ‘honour’.
Buckland, who was a considerable innovator in the English school of geology and described the first dinosaur (Megalosaurus) in 1824, was also a notable eccentric who prided himself on eating his way through the animal kingdom. Hare wrote: ‘Talk of strange relics led to mention of the heart of a French King preserved at Nuneham in a silver casket. Dr Buckland, whilst looking at it, exclaimed, “I have eaten many strange things, but have never eaten the heart of a king before,” and, before anyone could hinder him, he had gobbled it up, and the precious relic was lost for ever.’
Professor N.H. Gale MA, PhD, DSc, BSc, ARCS, FSA
Nuffield College, Oxford
Byrd song
Sir: Peter Phillips mentions (Arts, 3 May) hearing Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices in the unlikely setting of Lusaka, Zambia. I too have a happy memory of hearing a Byrd Mass, in this case for Three Voices, in an unexpected setting some years ago. My wife and I were members of a small congregation at a service of Holy Communion at Stiffkey Church, Norfolk. Just before the service began three young men entered the church and told the priest that they would be pleased to sing the Byrd Mass as an accompaniment. One of the three I believe was Michael Chance, the celebrated alto. Anyway, these three young men left my wife and I with a wonderful feeling of elation that such a thing could happen in a small country church.
Bill Marshall
Linslade, Bedfordshire
War of words
Sir: Sorry, Anthony Horowitz (Letters, 10 May), but Foyle’s War often contained linguistic anachronisms. Recent examples include ‘to loan a book’, ‘peek’, ‘to fill out a coupon’, ‘train station’, and ‘Who is this?’ (phone response). These examples of 1980s and 1990s language usage detracted from the efforts made to portray the second world war authentically.
Eric Brown
Bromley, Kent
To too far
Sir: Could you get Dot Wordsworth to devote a column to prepositions, and in particular, the use, or rather misuse, of ‘to’. Sky Sports and the BBC have used ‘defeat to’, rather than ‘defeat by’ and even the Daily Telegraph sub-editors, who I thought of as the last bastion of proper English, have allowed it through. At least there the meaning is clear, and I presume that the journalists concerned, knowing no better, have confused it with ‘lose to’. However, on the BBC news last night, their correspondent, referring to the Burma junta, said that they were ‘suspicious to’ the USA. The use here of ‘to’ rather than ‘of’ pretty much reverses the meaning of what she was trying to say.
John Duffield
Loughton, Essex
No sin of omission
Sir: Jonathan Mirsky (Books, 10 May) quotes Tony Judt stating that Arthur Koestler was ‘silent’ on ‘the famines, the expropriations, the wholesale deportations of peoples authorised by Stalin’. Koestler devoted most of the third part of his The Yogi and the Commissar to these subjects.
David Ashton
Norfolk
Guard duty
Sir: I have to advise Leonard Allen (Letters, 10 May) that his defence of what he refers to as ‘The Guards’ is misplaced. The Brigade of Guards and Household Cavalry have fought for freedom in this country for the BBC, and anyone else for that matter, to be able to screen what it likes without fear, favour or censorship. That, Mr Allen, is of far more importance and significance.
Nicky Samengo-Turner
Hundon, Suffolk
New depths
Sir: Bernard Levin memorably described Harold Wilson as ‘the worst British Prime Minister since Lord North’. If he was alive today, I am sure that he would revise his judgment, demoting Wilson in favour of the present incumbent.
Richard Skilbeck
Newbury, Berkshire
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