Spectator readers respond to recent articles
Darwinian faith
Sir: I am always amazed at how little Darwin’s devotees seem to know about his theory of how evolution came about. In addressing the familiar riddle of why the fossil record does
not show ‘intermediate forms’ between one species and another, Mr Lewin (Letters, 25 September) caustically claims that ‘intermediate is a mischief-word employed by
creationists’.
Had he read my article more carefully (or, more to the point, had he ever read The Origin of Species), he would realise that it was Darwin himself who first queried the absence of those
‘intermediate forms’. Darwin’s answer to these and other fundamental objections to his theory was, as I said in my article, no more than a leap of faith that one day the evidence
would be found to prove him right.
Since that evidence still hasn’t emerged, the Darwinians dismiss anyone who raises rational objections to the theory as a ‘creationist’. In fact it is they themselves who rest
their version on blind belief, just like the creationists they despise — because they cannot see how much there is about the evolutionary process for which they can provide no scientific
explanation.
Christopher Booker
Somerset
Full Sayle
Sir: Murray Sayle, whose death you noted last week, was not only among the best contributors to The Spectator in the 1980s: his articles were distinguished also by their great length. They would
normally run to around 4,000 words — more than five times longer than the extract you published from his account of the burning down of his house in a hill village in Japan
(‘Fire, fire!’, 25 September).
However, having just reread one of his most memorable pieces in The Spectator — on Gallipoli, the battle and the film (10 October 1981) — which was at once perceptive, provocative and
moving, I would confidently state that they were never too long.
Murray also enjoyed talking at some length. One evening we were leaving The Spectator’s offices for a drink at the local pub, when he stopped to greet a man about to get into his car. I
continued across the road to the pub and when, many minutes later, Murray joined me, I asked him who the man was.
‘I don’t know, but his car was a Toyota. So I thought he’d like to hear about the history of the company. Now, we were discussing the fall of Singapore…’ He
was a lovable eccentric and a great writer.
Simon Courtauld
Wiltshire
The dogs that didn’t bark
Sir: Never mind the paucity of media comment on Gordon Brown’s profligacy over the last ten years (Matthew Parris, 25 September); what about the even more culpable quietude of the opposition
benches? Were they enjoying the bonanza too much to notice? Or did they refrain from protesting too soon in order not to avert an economic debacle from which they expected to benefit
electorally?
Derek Rowntree
Banbury
Sir: Matthew Parris says it ‘may be time for a collective mea culpa from the media’. May? Here in the Midlands the shambling destruction of our country was discussed at every and any
social gathering from 1999 on, while the Islington clique were writing about their houses’ values and their places in the Dordogne. It wasn’t just the public finances that Blair/Brown,
and latterly Brown alone, were wrecking. Even worse, while we all knew what was going on, our natural allies, the Conservative opposition, showed no sign of realisation. We were ignored,
effectively disenfranchised. This is why the Tories didn’t get wholehearted support from us out here at the election. In truth, we still don’t know whether they understand now that
they are in government. Islingtonians and Notting Hillers should get out more.
W.G. Sellwood
Stafford
Unhealthy development
Sir: Toby Young’s thesis (‘Schools vs the architects’, 25 September) could also be applied to the NHS. Our local hospital recently spent almost £2 million on a makeover of
the entrance (90 per cent unnecessary) which included £3,000 for a small section of custom-made wallpaper. The hospital is comparatively new and in no way should have needed redecorating so
soon. The one original feature which needed to be changed was the carpet, which anyone with two brain cells could have seen was not the best idea for a busy general hospital. The same hospital also
built, in the last few years, a new four-storey office block with fashionable fittings to be enjoyed only by its admin staff. Let’s see if the GPs do any better.
M. Clarke
By email
Decanted by Dahl
Sir: In his review of Donald Sturrock’s Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl (Books, 11 September), Sam Leith refers to a South African guest who brought Roald Dahl two bottles of wine, upon
which Dahl ‘ostentatiously declared that they were piss, and poured them down the sink without tasting them’.
I was that guest, and I brought him two bottles of Meerlust (I forget which particular wine it was, probably their Rubicon). Hannes Myburgh, whose family has owned the esteemed Meerlust estate in
Stellenbosch in the Western Cape since 1756, was, and is, a good friend of my daughter Callie, who was working for the Dahls in the mid-1980s, hence my choice of their very splendid wine as a
gift.
Roald and Liccy were exceptionally kind to my daughter — but not to the wine!
Virginia Ash
South Africa
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