Pause for tort
Sir: Reading Sir David Tang’s diary last week, in which he recounts the story of me ‘Googling’ him on a train, made me reflect on how recollections of events can differ between honest witnesses. My own diary for that day read as follows: ‘Am sitting on the train trying to work when a businessman in a tweed jacket arrives with a substantial retinue. This man is clearly important. He sits opposite me and discusses the day’s pheasant shooting with his companions. It sounds extraordinarily productive (unless you are a pheasant). I gather that he has slept in Lord Lambton’s bed (minus Lord Lambton, it becomes clear). His plane has broken down. He lives in Hong Kong. Conversation subsides and his eye catches the law book on the table: Clerk & Lindsell on Torts. Suddenly animated, he leans over and asks me to remind him of the name of the case about the snail in the bottle of ginger beer. From Donoghue v. Stevenson the conversation leads on to his next stop: Blenheim Palace for dinner (where snails are only served with garlic, one assumes). Who is this man?? On his bag is a label in enormous capital letters: TANG. One of his companions calls him David. Google does the rest and he is gratifyingly startled when I quote his last Spectator diary to him. It must be fascinating to live like that. But at least one thing is certain — he will never write about me!’
Mark Simpson
London SW15
Terrorism in the raw
Sir: Since your correspondent R.L. O’Shaughnessy (Letters, 9 February) directly challenges me to say whether I have ‘ever experienced terrorism in the raw’, I hope you will grant me leave to answer.
As a schoolboy in south London during the second world war, I (along with some eight million other Londoners) experienced terrorism at its highest pitch, that of total war. I watched the vapour trails in the summer sky of 1940 as Fighter Command fought off the Luftwaffe’s attempt to win command of the air over Britain. With my neighbours and family I spent almost every night of the 1940-41 Blitz on London in a small air-raid shelter, listening to the drone of massed enemy bombers, the rolling thunder of anti-aircraft fire, and the whistle and crash of nearby bombs that rocked the house. Later, in 1944-45 (and again along with millions of other Londoners), I watched the V-1 flying-bombs riding in to that moment when the engine cut out and you wondered which way the bomb would glide before exploding. We were bombed out of our family home by a V-1 when three houses across the street were demolished by a direct hit. My future wife was in the Davis cinema in Croydon (the largest in Britain) when a German bomb came through the roof, but fortunately did not explode. Even so, several people sitting some rows in front of her were killed by falling debris.
And I remember that throughout all these bombardments, the railway stations and theatres stayed open, and the trains, buses and trams kept running.
As for terrorist violence in the narrow sense, I myself experienced it at first hand as a soldier in Palestine in 1946-47. I remember seeing in the Jerusalem morgue the corpses of British officers murdered in the bombing of the Officers’ Club by Jewish terrorists led by Menachem Begin, a future prime minister of Israel, while the two British sergeants kidnapped by Begin & co, hanged in an orange grove, and their bodies booby-trapped, were colleagues from a neighbouring field-security section.
These experiences of real war and of terrorist violence, coupled with my general reading as a military historian, therefore convince me that to talk of ‘a war on terror’ is grossly to exaggerate the scale of the current threat — and, worse, serves to glorify the Islamist plotters themselves.
Correlli Barnett
Norwich
Golden fleece
Sir: Allister Heath’s piece entitled ‘Fleecing non-doms’ (26 January) was excellent. In particular his point that ‘no taxpayer should be treated better than others merely by dint of his or her place of birth’. Mr Darling and Mr Brown as devolved Scotsmen should pay attention to this.
I believe George Osborne had a sneak preview of the October statement and could not resist turning the Chancellor into a magpie. I cannot believe he really meant to attack the non-doms. Surely he knows better than to introduce such a foolish penalty.
Rupert Hambro
London SW1
Dishonourable exception
Sir: Following Rod Liddle’s comments on smoking (‘Still fuming’, 2 February), there is an additional point to make.
The palace of Westminster is the only private club left in England still allowed to make its own smoking rules. All private clubs were to be given that right under Labour’s manifesto but, like the EU referendum, that was abandoned.
Is it any wonder that we hold politicians in such disrepute?
David Thorpe
Surrey
English delicacy
Sir: In his splendid, appetite-inducing piece on food (And another thing, 9 February), Paul Johnson forgets one great English delicacy — the truly magnificent chip butty. As a young, penniless reporter I virtually lived on these tasty wonders.
For the very best results use extremely soft, white bread. Then butter liberally (unsalted French butter is the best). Line up six chewy chips and then douse with either HP Brown Sauce or, better still, Daddies Sauce. The secret is to let the butter and sauce soak into the bread.
This should be accompanied by very strong, workmen’s-style tea (none of that sissy Earl Grey). Ah — food and drink for the gods.
Paul Callan
London SW10
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