The Spectator

Letters | 5 January 2008

Hoggartian paradox The result has been the Hoggartian paradox of programmes that managed to be both, in Simon’s words, ‘scaringly revealing’ and largely covering ‘old and well-travelled ground’.

issue 05 January 2008

Hoggartian paradox

The result has been the Hoggartian paradox of programmes that managed to be both, in Simon’s words, ‘scaringly revealing’ and largely covering ‘old and well-travelled ground’.

Hoggartian paradox

The result has been the Hoggartian paradox of programmes that managed to be both, in Simon’s words, ‘scaringly revealing’ and largely covering ‘old and well-travelled ground’. I am sorry that he was so disappointed and, of course, I am as sure that he would have done a better job of interviewing Mr Blair as I am that his criticisms are utterly unmotivated by envy.

David Aaronovitch
By email

In defence of Ms Gibbons

Mr Liddle might also care to reflect that if Ms Gibbons praises the warmth of the ordinary Sudanese people, it could be that she is not ‘thick’ or suffering from ‘congenital idiocy’ but that, having actually lived in Sudan, she knows what she is talking about.

David Eddyshaw
Swansea

Give me a medal

‘Can’t do that — health & safety — more than my job’s worth …etc.’

‘Well you hold the ladder while I go up and you tell me what to do.’

‘OK.’ [Amazing initiative!]

So up I up went with his pliers and testing kit and, under his instructions, cut, tested and refixed the wires. This showed that the problem was up the adjoining pole, which regulations allowed him to climb and fix. I am 65 and suffer from tunnel vision, so may I have a George Medal for ‘Bravery in the face of Health and Safety’?

As the engineer then rewarded me with a free load of wire and other goodies for improving the internal lines, please keep my name and address a secret.

Anonymous
Wales

Welsh Stalin

Sir: I enjoyed Paul Johnson’s essay on the Ozymandian transience of dictators (And another thing, 1 December), but I must take issue with him on his description of Henry VIII as the ‘English Stalin’. The Tudor dynasty was Welsh, and owed its existence to Welsh support for Henry VII at Bosworth. I would be the first to agree with you that the epithet ‘Georgian Henry VIII’ does not sit too comfortably, but facts, Mr Johnson, are facts.

John Christopher Williams
King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

Top-shelf Spectator

Sir: I recently bought my copy of The Spectator in my local supermarket. After the checkout girl had scanned it in, she asked me if I was over 18. ‘Eh?’ I replied. It transpired that yours is classified as an adults-only magazine in my local supermarket. Do you produce (ahem) ‘gentlemen’s supplements’ that are always, inexplicably missing from my copy?

Steven Richmond
Harpenden, Herts

Korngold uncut

Sir: Michael Tanner wrote that Decca’s recording of Das Wunder der Heliane, released in 1993, was ‘heavily and mercifully cut’. As the producer of the CDs, I can assure you that we recorded the opera uncut. Tanner should know better than to pass off opinion as fact. But then, by his own admission, he didn’t stay for the final act.

Michael Haas
London SW8

Millions of Mohammeds

Sir: I agree with Charles Moore’s curiosity (The Spectator’s Notes, 15–29 December) over the varying attitudes to the use of Jesus as a name in Christian countries (particularly Britain), in reference to Mohammed the teddy bear. What puzzles me, however, given the acute sensitivity of Muslims around all the issues regarding the Prophet, is the absolute abandon with which they take his name for their children. Is not this the ultimate presumption on the sanctity of the Prophet, to give millions of children his name without a second thought?

Clarke Hayes
Hastings

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