Gove’s moves
Sir: If Michael Gove (‘On the edge of his seat’, 18 June) really wants to do something about exams, then he would bring back O-levels in place of GCSEs. But that would entail denouncing the Prime Minister who made the change, formerly the education secretary who closed more grammar schools than were left at the end of her tenure. Can you name her? I think you can.
David Lindsay
County Durham
Sir: Michael Gove has no answer for how to revive the fortunes of the Conservative party in Scotland: ‘I don’t think there is any single thing that can be done.’ But might I suggest that better Tory candidates — like, say, Mr Gove himself — running north of the border would help?
Currer Ball
By email
Safeguards for justice
Sir: In your editorial (‘A law unto themselves’, 18 June), you rightly deplore the pressure from the judiciary to reduce the right to jury trial. However, over the last few years, it is the government that has reduced the right to a trial by one’s peers. Many district judges (magistrates’ courts), the old-fashioned stipendiary magistrates, have been appointed. These individuals are supplemented by a number of deputy and locum district judges and they replace lay magistrates. This means that many summary trials are conducted by individuals. This individual is judge and jury.
Simultaneously, government has given powers of arbitrary punishment to a vast range of individuals and bodies. It is obviously wrong that local authorities can benefit from ‘fines’ imposed by their own officers. Tony Blair’s knee-jerk suggestion of dragging young men to cash machines has been implemented as a ‘penalty notice for disorder’. The police can hand out ‘tickets’ for shoplifting. The previous government has been rightly criticised for inventing a whole new raft of crimes. There has been little or no comment on the arbitrary methods introduced by the previous government to detect offences and punish offenders. We have lost many safeguards against oppression by the state.
John Henderson
Winchester
Sympathy for Ms Johnson
Sir: Taking a few moments away from the blissful fulfilment that is my (Jewish) married life to concur with Rachel Johnson about the attraction of Jewish men (Diary, 18 June), I must extend my heartfelt sympathy to a woman so deprived that she is forced into an unrequited lust for Dominique Strauss-Kahn. A friend with whom I was discussing the item suggested tartly that anyone so interested in circumcised sex should convert and have done. But it occurred to me that Ms Johnson could simply get her man by finding out what French governmental agency is already quietly planning to re-employ the ex IMF chief, and applying for a job as a chambermaid.
L. Rivlin
London N10
Remembering Paddy
Sir: I enjoyed Charles Moore’s apt note on Patrick Leigh Fermor (18 June). He was indeed the best companion. In October 2007, I gave Paddy a lift home from Athens on my way to Pylos for the Battle of Navarino celebrations. He was on top form, and having dispensed due mock reverence to the Diplomatic Service, his conversation sparkled, punctuated by the odd catnap and roadside stop in the oleander.
After Kalamata he became noticeably apprehensive. It turned out that, even after 50 or so years, returning from long breaks he was always fearful that some disaster had befallen the house. We sympathised glumly with each other over this shared feeling before he broke into ‘Tout va tres bien Madame La Marquise’. Paddy provided all the voices as we sang our way to Kardamyli.
Ian Whitting
Reykjavik, Iceland
Sir: Earlier this month I spent a few days in Crete and one lunchtime had a meal in a small café in Chania. The owner, after taking a few moments to decide whether we were German or not, began to describe how I had just missed the annual celebration to commemorate the liberation of the island. We discussed the war years and the Cretan resistance and he said how proud he was of his mother, who as a young girl had taken food to the members of the resistance. ‘It was easier for a girl to get through.’ I asked if he had heard of Patrick Leigh Fermor and he replied immediately, ‘He was the man who got the German general.’ It is very sad to read only a few days later of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s death but quite clearly his memory still lives on with many on the island.
James Wethered
By email
King of kings
Sir: How can James Delingpole believe that Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Arts, 18 June) is the ‘best modern adaptation’ of the Arthurian legends? This title has belonged for decades to T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, which combined profound insight into the virtues and vices of the King and his knights with excoriating satire of modern habits of thought.
Trust the Eng lit graduate to overlook a literary adaptation. Perhaps his view was obscured by the futile animated film version of White’s masterpiece.
Richard de Lacy QC
London WC2
Against the men
Sir: In his review of David Pryce-Jones’s eloquent book Treason of the Heart (Books, 11 June), Sam Leith attacks the author’s ad hominem approach. Since the whole subject of the book is a series of homines and their treasons, it is extraordinarily difficult to see how any other approach could have been followed.
John Jolliffe
Alnwick
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