Letters: James Whitaker’s widow answers Toby Young

Absent friends

Sir: Alec Marsh (‘Welcome to Big Venice’, 10 August) accurately observes that Londoners are priced out of central London by largely foreign buyers of second homes. Wealthy foreigners not only buy, they also rent, often living in London for a few years, during which they frequently return to their first home for weeks or months at a time. In Marylebone, where I have lived for 43 years, an average earner can neither buy nor rent. Moreover, rentals are only short hold. This contributes to the death of communities: it is not their foreignness which makes the new residents bad neighbours, nor their love of the convenient transport and vastly expensive shops and restaurants, but their transience and consequent lack of interest in local people, history and customs. You cannot entrust your keys, nor call for help in emergency, nor appeal for support to save a beautiful endangered building, to people who are semi-absent. We should require city planners and owners of large swaths of property to act for the benefit of this great city, by allowing average earners to become residents.
Penrose Halson
Marylebone, London

May’s OK

Sir: I was a little surprised by James Forsyth’s assertion in his article ‘Boris vs Theresa’ (3 August) that more than a few of Theresa May’s ‘juniors, past and present, complain that she micromanages… and that she is quicker to take credit than blame. This was certainly not my experience as one of her junior ministers at the Home Office. I always found her supportive and ready to give me the initiative to make decisions within my own brief. The Home Office team was run on collegiate lines and I am sure other colleagues would agree with me.
Lord Henley
Carlisle, Cumberland