LETTERS
was one serious disadvantage: if the horse
comes down, you fall with it — attached
to the saddle. My mother had numerous
broken shoulders and collar bones from
hunting falls.
Billy Stanier
Whaddon, BuckinghamshireKeeping up appearances
Sir: Rory Sutherland wonders why ‘people
get up at 7 a.m. and travel to work on
overcrowded trains, only to sit at their
desks and answer emails, something you
can just as easily do at home.’
He answered his own question on
14 January, when he commented on John
Maynard Keynes’s 1929 prediction that
increases in productivity would enable us
to work a 16-hour week by 2029. In fact,
our salarymen and women are working
far longer hours, generating ‘a carapace
of bullshit’ to protect their positions on
the greasy pole. You can’t do that working
from home.
Prof Tom Burkard
NorwichGrey matter
Sir: Grey Gowrie may be ‘the most
undervalued poet of our time’ (Books,
8 April), but he was certainly not
undervalued by Mrs Thatcher, even though
they were poles apart on many issues. This
close associate of Jim Prior spent a year in
her cabinet as arts minister and chancellor
of the Duchy of Lancaster; in her memoirs
she upgraded him to Leader of the Lords.
He left her in September 1985, turning
down the Department of Education, which
has been held only once by a peer since
the war (and then for no more than eight
months). He was, she said, ‘the greatest
loss’; she had been captivated by his
‘excellent mind’.
Alistair Lexden
House of Lords, London SW1Tall tales
Sir: I sympathise with Mark Mason
(‘My towering problem’, 8 April). When an
undergraduate at Oriel College, Oxford,
I applied to London Transport for a job as
a conductor on the buses. I managed to pass
the intelligence test but was considered to
be too tall to collect fares upstairs.
Michael Paterson
London SW20WRITE TO US
The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street,
London SW1H 9HP
[email protected]On Pamela Harriman
Sir: When it comes to grandes horizontales
and naughty girls, I defer to Taki (High
Life, 8 April). On either topic, he could win
Pulitzer prizes. I am also unsure whether
I should have described Pamela Harriman
as a naughty girl. Most girls I know would
take that as a compliment; she did not
deserve compliments. I did meet her once,
after she had taken up with the Clintons,
and expected to despise her. But there was
an allure. Like Circe and Delilah, she had
a ruthless charm. She could make any man
feel that he was the most important being
in the room and in my case, there could
hardly have been a mercenary motive. I’m
told that Bill Clinton, whom I have not
met, can play similar tricks. Even those who
know that he is full of sleaze find that they
have to fight to resist enchantment. That
is not true of his wife.
Taki mentions young Winston Churchill:
nomen et praeterea nihil. Poor fellow: at the
hands of two such selfish and neglectful
creatures as Pamela and Randolph, he had
an appalling upbringing. If he had been a
child from the slums, he would probably
have been taken into care. Yet she might
have one defence to the charge of utter
meretriciousness. I suspect that she did love
Averell Harriman, which does not excuse
her attempts to plunder his estate. But
early in the war, during its bleakest phase,
her bedroom diplomacy undoubtedly
assisted Anglo-American relations. They
understand such matters in Paris, where
Madame Claude often supplied the Quai
d’Orsay with poules de luxe. Yet I doubt if
any of Mme Claude’s girls ever became an
ambassador. Taki would know.
Bruce Anderson
London SW1
Pound punishment
Sir: I read with interest Hugo Rifkind’s
views on the suggestion that imperial
measurements be restored (‘Let’s rein in
Brexiteer triumphalism’, 8 April). I am
nearly 78 and still have in my possession a
handwritten class test in arithmetic which
contains problems in both imperial and
metric. Needless to say that I have always
favoured imperial units, as I regard
six inches as much more easily envisaged
than, say, 150 millimetres. I think that the
main thing people were annoyed about was
the criminalisation of imperial usage. Why
were people prosecuted for using pounds
and ounces? This sort of thing is what really
annoyed people like me about the EU, as
the law’s origins were that august institution.
John R. McErlean
Elstow, Bedfordshire
Grauniad Island
Sir: I initially misread Rod Liddle’s
suggested destination for Channel 4
presenters (‘You can take the liberal media
bubble out of London...’, 8 April). Rather
than Gruinard Island of anthrax fame, I
thought he wrote Grauniad Island. An
island for Guardian journalists? What a
magnificent idea. Perhaps the French could
be persuaded to grant us a 99-year lease
on Devil’s Island in French Guiana. That
would be ideal. Having no one else around
to annoy would be a greater torture for
the likes of Polly Toynbee and Owen Jones
than anything the former French prison
guards ever managed to devise.
Jeremy Stocker
Willoughby, WarwickshireSide-saddle downside
Sir: Charles Moore quotes from Lady
Apsley’s bible for women riding side-saddle
(The Spectator’s Notes, 8 April). My late
mother, Dorothy Stanier, was the doyenne
of Leicestershire side-saddle hunting ladies
50 years ago. She too extolled the merits of
riding thus, but she also admitted that there/RQGRQ¶V¿QHVWPHPEHUV¶FOXE
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