Forfeiting the VC
Sir: Although Charles Moore (Notes, 18 February) is correct to say (quoting Colonel Tim Collins) that a holder of the Victoria Cross cannot be stripped of it whatever subsequent disgrace he suffers, he could have added that this is so only thanks to royal intervention. Early in the last century, some functionary proposed, in a characteristic display of official spite, that VCs should lose the decoration if they were convicted of a serious offence. This came to the attention of King George V, whose sense of decency, just as characteristically, was outraged. As he protested, the VC was awarded for supreme gallantry, which nothing could subsequently efface. To make his point with mordant emphasis, the King added that, if a holder of the VC were convicted of murder, he should be allowed to wear his medal on the gallows. That was the end of the obnoxious proposal.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Combe Down, Bath
Sir: Charles Moore raises an interesting point regarding the forfeiture of a VC. Eight men have been stripped of their awards, all prior to 1914 and mainly after criminal conviction for theft. George V strongly objected to the use of forfeiture and, while no awards have been forfeited since the start of his reign, the power to cancel (and restore) awards is still included in the Victoria Cross warrant. One of the sadder aspects of these forfeitures was that the men involved also lost the pensions to which their VCs entitled them — and that, before the welfare state, often meant destitution.
Richard Sherrin
London N1
Never benign
Sir: With due respect to William Shawcross (Letters, 18 February) in his polite assault on my book, I have not there or anywhere else suggested that the USSR aimed to be a benign force — only that it had no desire whatever to launch a third world war.
Andrew Alexander
London SW10
Dinner with Dreyfus
Sir: I read Allan Massie’s review of Piers Paul Read’s The Dreyfus Affair (Books, 11 February) with interest. My grandfather Sir Kenneth Pickthorn met Dreyfus in unusual circumstances in the early part of the first world war. The rifle regiment in which he was a young lieutenant had been placed in the front line alongside a French regiment. Because his French was good, his colonel asked him to attend a routine liaison meeting at the French regimental headquarters along the line. When the meeting had concluded, the French colonel asked if my grandfather was hungry and would like to eat. He indicated the French officers’ mess which was in a nearby farm building. In the French mess there were groups of officers seated at tables. My grandfather felt diffident and joined a French officer seated on his own. My grandfather tried to draw him into conversation and referred to the Dreyfus Affair. The French officer shot him a glance, and said, ‘Le juif, c’est moi.’
Charles Iliff
London SW12
Hensher’s people
Sir: In his riveting traversal of the letters of Joseph Roth (Books, 4 February), Philip Hensher dismisses a fellow writer, Stefan Zweig, in this fashion: ‘In most people’s eyes nowadays, he was a complete artistic and intellectual lightweight.’ Really? This seems simplistic and disingenuous. How many eyes constitute most? Not these eyes, anyway. Might it not have been fairer merely to write that he does not rate him at all? In 1996, Philip wrote in The Spectator that, after the film of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera ‘seems to be pretty widely regarded as an old sexist writing lightweight books about “having it off” in Central Europe’. Does he conduct European polls?
Oliver Gilmour
By email
Late convert
Sir: The article on Lord Carey (‘The People’s Primate’, 18 February) made for interesting, if rather infuriating, loo reading. Interesting that he now espouses some fairly sensible, mainstream views on all sorts of subjects; infuriating that he came out with so very few of them when he had the see of Canterbury — and was in more of a position to make a difference in the culture wars. Is this an extended ecclesiastical esprit d’escalier? Has he only just reached these conclusions? Or was he too timid to utter them when in Lambeth Palace? He was, I suppose, regarded at the time as historically a very young incumbent of the role. Perhaps Archbishops of Canterbury should only be appointed when they have reached some firm views which they are also prepared to utter. Someone please bung that in the job description for the next one.
Duncan Reed
London SW18
A barbarian writes
Sir: Bravo Brendan O’Neill (‘An acceptable hatred’, 11 February)! It may come as a shock, but among the barbarian hordes crammed into our football stadia every week are Spectator readers. Fortunately, more genteel readers will be able to spot us at Spectator gatherings: we are the ones dragging our knuckles across the floor.
Andrew Wright
By email
Shopping for compliments
Sir: The shopkeepers who now call Mary Wakefield ‘madam’ (Diary, 18 February) pursue an opposite strategy with men. The moment I knew my youth was over was when they stopped attempting to flatter me about how old I looked — by calling me ‘sir’ — and started attempting to flatter me about how young I looked — by calling me ‘young man’.
Robin Peters
Nottingham
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