House style
Sir: How quaint that Simon Jenkins writes ‘working class’ without irony (‘Who do you Trust?’, 30 October). He must be among the very last to do so. But then he is chairman of that stultified repository of selective memory, the National Trust. I wonder why he thinks ‘working class’ means stupid.
Jenkins, of course, struggles under the terrible burden of always being right. But let’s see if a little astute correction might deflate the bubble of embracing self-love he so very complacently inhabits.
Any event-organiser knows that free drinks (and possibly live sex plus public executions) will get the attendance numbers up. It’s easy. But there are higher goals than mere numerical popularity.
Jenkins’s programme of bringing ‘life’ to National Trust properties lacks intellectual rigour or historical method. He rejects scrutiny and study of buildings in favour of patronising vulgarity. Children dancing? Oh, for goodness sake! Sick bag.
There is a very clear definition of what is ‘low-brow’. It’s an appeal to vicarious contact with celebrity, an inability to conceptualise and a need for gross and immediate gratification. People who understand architecture accuse Jenkins of Disneyfication. Jenkins says Disney is an excellent model. But Disney trades in brainless simulacra, trashy and slick versions of things that never were. There is nothing authentic about Disney. Imagine explaining Jenkins’s inflated caterpillar to James Lees-Milne.
Soon, in the Jenkins version, the ‘working class’ will drive to Knole, get a burger on entrance and watch a tableau of Sackville-West indiscretions set to a disco beat. This will be a travesty. And Simon Jenkins will be smug about it.
Stephen Bayley
By email
How to spot a floozy
Sir: I admire the spirit of perversity in Tanya Gold’s article (‘Only prigs wear mini-skirts’, 30 October), but she shouldn’t be allowed to get away with saying that women who dress like Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey are the real ‘sex monsters’. It’s so obviously untrue. As a young woman, I was rather too keen on mini-skirts and men. Now I am older and wiser, I dress modestly — not like an Edwardian countess, but I never show much flesh in public. To suggest that any woman who covers herself up is a harlot in disguise is ridiculous — and a bit insulting. I’m afraid to tell Ms Gold that the reality is boringly obvious: if a girl looks like a prude, chances are she is a prude; if she looks like a floozy, she probably is a floozy.
Deborah Prendergast
London SW11
Fair hearing
Sir: I too caught precious little of what was said in Winter’s Bone (Diary, 30 October). Then I went to The Social Network, a film about the founding of Facebook — exactly the same. I was convinced that it was hearing-aid time for me. So I am heartened that Miriam Gross says she and her husband have normal hearing. Perhaps it means mine isn’t too bad. Deborah Ross was enthusiastic about Social Network yet made no mention of a tricky soundtrack. Maybe the small preview theatres where the critics see films have better sound systems than big cinemas.
Roger Hudson
London W8
Nice work
Sir: It was a pleasure to read Nicholas Barrow’s lucid and self-deprecating account of the difficulties faced by Asperger’s sufferers as they try to gain a foothold in the job market (‘Work? Nice if you can get it’, 30 October). Although I would decry any move by The Spectator away from erudition and style towards heart-on-sleeve campaign journalism, I am gratified to see that it does not feel itself above providing its readers with unfamiliar perspectives such as this.
Edward Hamer
By email
Talking Turkey
Sir: In drawing attention to one anachronism in Downton Abbey relating to the name of a Turkish diplomat (Letters, 23 October), I am surprised that Lord Monson did not mention another in the same episode. While the name Istanbul existed in 1912, the valet would almost certainly have expressed a desire to visit Constantinople, as this was the city’s official name until 1923 and the one used by foreigners.
David Reid
Kent
Shakespearean Fellowes
Sir: I am amazed at the preponderance in your pages of hyper-critics who sneer at the anachronisms in Downton Abbey, as if they had nothing better to do. Do these same people take issue with Shakespeare when he places chiming clocks in the Rome of Julius Caesar, or has Hector citing Aristotle in Troilus and Cressida? Julian Fellowes would appear to be in fine company.
Adrian Hilton
Buckinghamshire
Difficulties with birds
Sir: An excellent piece by Mark Palmer about his parrot (‘The pecking order’, 30 October). The answer to Mark’s problem is simple. He should become an aviculturist; have an aviary designed and built in his garden for Nero; then go parrot ‘speed-dating’ with Nero in search of his own Octavia. Nero will settle down happily with his new bride and Mark and his wife can have the weekends away that they deserve after raising their own brood. By spring of 2011, Nero and Octavia may decide that they wish to start their own family.
Les Rance
Secretary, Parrot Society UK
Hertfordshire
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