Listen and learn
Sir: We’re going to have to get used to cuts, says Kate Chisholm (Arts, 28 March), while criticising the axing of the last children’s programme on the BBC’s mainstream networks as a cut too far. Last year a meagre £1.6 million of the £460 million the BBC spent on its radio services went on programming for children. For years BBC executives have justified this neglect by saying that children don’t want radio but only TV and pop music. But do we remove fresh fruit juice and green vegetables because children prefer burgers and pop?
To talk, children must first learn to listen, and last year’s government-commissioned Bercow Report exposed serious speech, language and communication needs [SLCN] in UK children, prompting the government to invest £52 million in an SLCN Action Plan leading up to a Year of Language & Communication in 2011-12. Radio can play a role in this.
The BBC Trust wants practical partnerships with socially conscious organisations to reduce a growing public service broadcasting deficit. A children’s radio network would be a very sensible place to start.
Susan Stranks
National Campaign for Children’s Radio
Brighton
Settle the act
Sir: Charles Moore suggests (The Spectator’s Notes, 4 April) that the best approach to the tradition of Catholics being prohibited from marrying an heir to the throne is to ‘leave well enough alone’. Yet that is not an orthodox conservative argument: Edmund Burke laid it down that in order to remain conservative, one must change.
The British monarchy has subtly evolved over centuries and decades, and has gradually introduced changes which in general have strengthened the institution. Edward VII was very unhappy with the traditional Protestant declaration monarchs were obliged to make upon accession, as it contained an unkind rigmarole excoriating the cult of the Blessed Virgin (as a happy visitor to the monks of Tepl in Marienbad, he regarded the Marian cult benignly). Lord Salisbury would not permit the King to alter this declaration, saying there would be ‘riots in the country’. Subsequently, George V did alter it, simply declaring himself a faithful Protestant and deleting the more blood-curdling words about Rome and all her superstitions: there were no riots in the country, and it was accepted as a sensible evolutionary step.
The Act of Settlement can be amended to remove the anti-Catholic clause, but this should be done prudently, so as to evolve, not impair, the value of the monarchy. The Dutch have arrived at a reasonable compromise: the Crown Princess is a Roman Catholic, but the children of Willem-Alexander and Maxima are being brought up Lutherans, in the tradition of the Dutch royal family.
Mary Kenny
Deal, Kent
A coincidental mistress
Sir: How deliciously coincidental that the new New York mistress (‘Me, the femme fatale du jour?’, 4 April) should be called Floethe! (I assume it rhymes with the German poet?)
Dr A.E. Hanwell
York
The poor little Greek hick
Sir: Taki writes (High Life, 4 April) that New York is ‘the grail we’re all seeking’. By misquoting Lorenz Hart, the laureate of Broadway, he reveals himself to be a hick. Hart’s lyric for ‘I Wish I Were In Love Again’ runs: ‘The broken dates, the endless waits, the lovely loving and the hateful hates, the conversation with the flying plates’. It is not the song’s refrain. It is, as all New Yorkers know, the second verse. But what can one expect from a poor little Greek boy?
Michael Henderson
London, W13
No nemesis
Sir: I was rather puzzled to see Deborah Ross (Arts, 28 March) referring to Don Revie as Brian Clough’s nemesis. Surely one’s nemesis is the agent of one’s downfall, the term deriving from the Greek goddess of retribution. Why have journalists taken to using it simply as a synonym for rival or enemy?
M. Skeggs
Via email
Liverpool’s legacy
Sir: Andrew Lambirth’s review (Arts, 14 March) of Maggi Hambling’s portraits of George Melly, while full of praise, is strangely critical of the fact that the show, on until 31 May, is at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, Melly’s birthplace. His view is that ‘an exhibition of this breadth and importance should be available in the capital city’, but my question is, why?
Has he forgotten already why Liverpool’s work in 2008 has become the benchmark for all future European Capitals of Culture? Also, art lovers live in and visit cities other than London. But above all Lambirth seems to forget that the Walker is the national gallery of the north, part of National Museums Liverpool. Shows like Maggi Hambling’s are part of the reason why.
Phil Redmond
Chairman, National Museums Liverpool and Deputy Chair, Liverpool Culture Company
Liverpool
Correction
Last week’s Spectator included an article by Victoria Floethe about the response in New York to an affair she had with Michael Wolff. Ms Floethe referred to the ‘obviously gleeful revenge toward Michael’ allegedly taken by [Rupert] ‘Murdoch’s paper’ — after which the words Wall Street Journal were wrongly inserted in a production error. The newspaper to which she was referring was, in fact, the New York Post. We regret the misleading impression. The Wall Street Journal was not in any way involved in the story described in her article.
The Page Six gossip column appears in the New York Post, and not the New York Times (as was wrongly stated in the piece thanks to a related production error).
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