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The Times Great Letters: A century of notable correspondence
James Owen
The Times has the most famous letters page of any newspaper. This delightful selection of over 300 items of correspondence over the last century shows precisely why.As a forum for debate, playground for opinion-formers, advertising space for decision-makers and noticeboard for eccentrics, nothing rivals it for entertainment value. By turns well-informed, well-intentioned, curious, quirky and bizarre, since 1914 it has taken the temperature of the British way of life and provided a window on the national character.Among those who have written to The Times to have their say are some of the major political and literary figures of the modern era, including Margaret Thatcher, Benito Mussolini, Graham Greene and John Le Carré. There are contributions, too, from Agatha Christie, Alastair Campbell, AA Milne, Yehudi Menuhin, Theresa May and Morrissey.If you want to know why kippers are dyed, who first turned up their trousers, how to make perfect porridge or just how to have a letter printed in The Times, this infinitely witty, diverting and memorable anthology should be, sincerely, yours.
Published by Times Books
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Ebook first edition 2017
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Copyright in the letters published in this volume belongs to the writers or their heirs or executors. HarperCollins would like to thank all those letter-writers who have given permission for their letters to appear in this volume. Every effort has been made to contact all individuals whose letters are contained within this volume; if anyone has been overlooked, we would be grateful if he or she would contact HarperCollins.
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Ebook Edition © October 2017
ISBN: 9780008280222, version 2017-09-28
Contents
Cover (#u2e9ef393-8325-5ae7-b969-b1069cc268f5)
Title (#u201e6272-ac69-5d4e-af29-68ded6ff338c)
Copyright (#ub97ee06f-65be-5b60-8f43-1254bf16a5e1)
Contents (#uda3c0c07-f24b-5567-ab6e-2adc75c185df)
Introduction (#u12dcd9b8-2eea-53af-b7fa-92df0acf28d8)
Starting Times (#u776459d1-b0b9-51c0-922a-c0f80fe70f0b)
Thundering (1914–19) (#uafa2e30a-8027-5dc2-855f-cea576eff4f7)
New Times and New Standards (1920–29) (#uad05bc86-64e8-5f40-bfa1-0c3737101c73)
Newspaper of Record (1930–39) (#u55c4ac61-b3ba-5f17-891f-134b7d97038c)
The Best of Times, the Worst of Times (1940–49) (#litres_trial_promo)
Changing Times (1950–59) (#litres_trial_promo)
Keeping up with the Times (1960–69) (#litres_trial_promo)
The Top People’s Paper (1970–79) (#litres_trial_promo)
Living in Interesting Times (1980–89) (#litres_trial_promo)
Modern Times (1990–99) (#litres_trial_promo)
From Blair to Brexit (2000–16) (#litres_trial_promo)
End Times (#litres_trial_promo)
Index of Letter Writers (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
INTRODUCTION
Before 1914, there was no Letters Page as such in The Times. The newspaper had, since its founding in 1785, published correspondence to it. Yet in the era when its front page was still reserved for items of more importance than mere news — club announcements, death notices and public appointments — letters had to be fitted in as space allowed rather than gathered together: let alone considered an attraction in their own right.
Although the change did not become fixed for some years, the decision to start grouping letters onto a single page when possible began to alter their nature and function. Until well into the previous century, those published had often been immensely lengthy (and now almost incomprehensible) political polemics.
That Victorian taste for abundance had begun to dwindle by the time of the First World War and the advent of the motor car and the telephone had led to predictions of an imminent end to letter-writing. But while the constraints of the new lay-out often did encourage correspondents to be briefer, its introduction turned the page into the noticeboard of the Establishment.
Rapidly, it took on the character for which it has become renowned, as a forum for debate, as a playground for opinion-formers and as a billboard for decision-makers. From the start, however, such weighty content was leavened by humour and quirkiness. Moreover, with readers making a regular appointment with the page, another of its features became more pronounced: rallies of letters, with each mail bringing a fresh serving of wit and erudition.
Indeed, what is most striking about this selection of letters, across the years, is the sense of community between readers that emanates from them. Of course, what that community was has changed markedly over time. For much of the first half of this volume, it was largely that which treated the page as an extension of their gentlemen’s club. The tone and content accordingly reflects their self-assurance and their preoccupations — cricket features strongly, as do mentions of Eton; and sometimes both together.
Not until well into the post-war years does the mood become more sombre, pondering (if not resolving) the uncertainties of imperial twilight and economic decline. By then, the readership is notably broader, as changes in education, society and at work bear fruit: in the 1970s, more Labour than Conservative MPs took The Times. Nonetheless, it is remarkable how frequently the same topics recur in correspondence across the generations — the failings of the young, what is to be done about schools, how best to make porridge.
For it seems to me that the value of these letters lies not just in the great events which often they record, be it the death of Elvis Presley or the onset of the internet, nor even in the changing attitudes that they mirror, but in the window that they offer on the national character. Unconsciously revelatory they may be, but the fascination of so many of these letters is their insight into what it means at any time to be British. They take the temperature of the body politic, map the A–Z of our way of life.
They are a reminder, too, that the writing of letters (and emails), and not just of books, can be an art form. Here are Margaret Thatcher, Benito Mussolini and Theresa May giving glimpses of what took them to the top. Meanwhile, Spike Milligan, PG Wodehouse and Celia Johnson use comedy to have their say.
There are masters of the craft to be rediscovered here, among them AP Herbert and Peter Fleming. Graham Greene, John Le Carré and Agatha Christie demonstrate why they made their living from their pens, even if a taxi driver puts TS Eliot square about the limits of Bertrand Russell’s intellect. And Arthur Koestler makes the case for a tax on pleasure (with married love to be zero-rated).
If a Hungarian-born intellectual can be moved to write amusingly in his sixth or seventh language to a newspaper, it must be doing something right. At its best, that is to draw its readers into a long, ongoing conversation about the direction of the nation, what shape it is in and which qualities it should exude.
What is important is that dialogue is open to anyone who reads the paper, not just those who are influenced by its readers’ views, or who seek to influence them. Not everyone understands the rules at once, as the first letter hereafter shows (“How to Have a Letter Published”).
But it is hard to think of another group of readers who, wanting to protest a decision by local councillors about an exhibition, would spontaneously adopt the personae of literary characters relevant to their cause (“The Curious Case of Sherlock Holmes”, which can be found at the start of the book). That ability to make your point whilst retaining your sense of humour is perhaps uniquely — and the best of — British. If newspapers can have a soul, it can be found here, on the Letters Page.
Where it might be helpful, I have added brief contexts to some of the letters which follow. Similarly, the capacities in which correspondents write and their addresses have also been included as seems necessary. Notwithstanding the passage of time, the style and usage of language in the letters, and the views expressed in them, remain those of the original.
JAMES OWEN
starting times
How to Have a Letter Published
26 January 1970
Sir, You’re joking. You must be. “Who will be writing to The Times tonight?” is printed on the face of an envelope containing a letter to me from The Times. The letter “assures you that your remarks were read with interest”. But not sufficient interest to warrant publication. I wonder why when one considers the amount of drivel that is to be found in the Letters to the Editor.
Three times in my life I have written a letter to the Editor. Three times he has found my letter interesting, but not sufficiently so to warrant publication.
The first was on the subject of east Germany, on which I have had a book published. Probably I was not considered an expert on east Germany.
The second was a protest, and an invitation to others to do so, against the victimization of Lieutenant-Colonel Emil Zátopek, the Czechoslovak Olympic athlete. Presumably I was not considered an expert, although, in Prague itself, at the height of his career and for seven years, I advised Zátopek on his training. And wrote two books on sport in Czechoslovakia under the communists.
The third, recently, was a reply to Sir Peter Mursell, a member of the Royal Commission on Local Government, on the implications of the Maud Report. Again, I assume, I was not regarded as an authority on the subject, although the Guardian has given a pen picture of my work against Maud spread over four columns and I have been invited to debate Maud with Lord Redcliffe-Maud at University College, Oxford, of which he is Master.
What does one have to do in order to be recognized by the Editor of The Times? Bring about a counter-revolution in communist east Germany? Run faster than Zátopek? Become chairman of a new Royal Commission on Local Government in England?
Yours faithfully,
J. ARMOUR-MILNE
Replied on 28 January 1970
Sir, The answer to Mr. J. Armour-Milne’s question is simple.
Last year I had two letters published in The Times and I’ve been dining out on them ever since. They involved me in an exchange of letters of ever-increasing lunacy with other correspondents. I can bear witness that the prime qualification you need to get letters published in The Times is eccentricity.
Yours faithfully,
SYLVIA MARGOLIS
* * * * * * *
The Curious Case of Sherlock Holmes
28 October 1950
Sir, It is doubtful whether Mr. Sherlock Holmes will have seen the paragraph in The Times to-day recording the singular decision of the councillors of St. Marylebone to oppose the proposal for an exhibition of material of my old friend and mentor for the benefit of visitors to the Festival of Britain. Engrossed as he is in bee-keeping in Sussex, he is unlikely to rally to his own defence, and you will perhaps allow me, as a humble chronicler of some of his cases and as a former resident in the borough, to express indignation at this decision.
There is much housing in the Metropolis but there is but one Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and I venture to assert that visitors from across the Atlantic (who cannot as yet forgotten my old friend’s remarkable work in clearing up the dark mystery of the Valley of Fear and the grotesque affair of the Study in Scarlet) would find such an exhibition of interest. Why the councillors of St. Marylebone, in their anxiety to display their work on the clearing of slums, should deny honour to my old friend I find it hard to understand. Perhaps this is time’s revenge for the exposure by Mr. Sherlock Holmes of the evil machinations of the Norwood Builder. Whatever the reason, I trust that second and better thoughts may prevail, and in the meantime subscribe myself,
Your humble but indignant servant,
JOHN H. WATSON, M.D. late of the Indian Army.
2 November 1950
Sir, To-day I visited Mr. Sherlock Holmes and conveyed to him the welcome news that St. Marylebone will hold an exhibition in his honour during the Festival of Britain. I could see he was deeply moved by this tribute, as also by the correspondence in which your readers have so warmly supported my plea. Several of those letters raise the subject of commemorative material to be placed on exhibition. Alas, but little remains, for a mysterious and disastrous fire at my old friend’s Sussex home some years ago (the details of which are not yet ready to be given to the world) destroyed the greater part of the relics of his cases. St. Marylebone, I fear, will have to manage without his help.
May I trespass a little further on your indulgence to reply to two of your correspondents? Mycroft Holmes is, of course, technically correct in stating I was not in the Indian Army, though I did in fact so describe myself on the battered tin dispatch box which until recently lay in the vaults of Cox’s Bank in Pall Mall. But it was the custom in 1878, when I was wounded at Maiwand, for those in whatever regiment in India they served, to describe themselves as “of the Indian Army,” a point of which Mycroft in his omniscience will be well aware. As for Mrs. Whitney, I am surprised that, in spite of her close friendship, she is apparently unaware that my dear first wife used “James” as a name for him who remains,
Yours faithfully,
JOHN H. WATSON, M.D.
Replied on 2 November 1950
Sir, Long years of retirement have failed to break the professional habit of careful examination of the Personal columns of The Times newspaper and a necessarily hastier perusal of its other contents. Thus I have learned with no little surprise of the proposal to stage an exhibition perpetuating the performances of my old acquaintance, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Surely in this correspondence to-day’s letter from Mrs. Hudson, his worthy landlady, places the abilities of Mr. Holmes in their right perspective. A place of amusement, such as Madame Tussaud’s, is surely the proper setting for a record of Holmes’s amateur achievements. It would be ungenerous of me to deny that on occasion the gifted guesswork of Mr. Holmes has jumped a stage in the final solution of a crime. It may not be inappropriate to remind your readers, however, of the fable of the tortoise and the hare, and the true student of criminology will continue to regard as the only true source the so-called “Black Museum” of that institution on the Victoria Embankment which for so many years I had the honour to serve.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
G. LESTRADE, ex-lnspector, Metropolitan Police.
THUNDERING
1914–19
Mr. Backhouse’s gift to Bodleian
7 January 1914
Sir, I read with interest the illuminating account in your issue of December 2 of the Chinese library presented by me to the Bodleian, and thank the writer for correcting an error into which I had carelessly fallen respecting one of the Sung editions, the “Ku Chin Chi Yao.” My reason for assigning some date prior to 1085 was that a character identical with the tabooed personal name of an Emperor who reigned after that year was not written with the customary omission of a stroke as a mark of respect. This rule was rigidly enforced under the Sungs, as in later dynasties, and its contravention can only have been due to carelessness on the part of the printer, as your article shows conclusively that the earlier date which I had assigned cannot be correct. It appears from a catalogue which I have consulted that the “editio princeps” of this work was published in 1260, the first year of the Ching Ting of the Southern Sung dynasty, and also the year of Kublai’s accession to the northern throne. My belief is that the copy in the Bodleian is the first edition, so that it should be assigned to the Sung and not to the Yuan. Several reproductions of Sung printing which I have seen show the cramped style of printing which your article rightly mentioned as characteristic also of the Yuan period.
In reference to another Sung print in the collection you allude to the light shade of the paper; I do not think that this is exceptional in books of that date. I have before me a Sung edition of the collection known as “Wen Hsuan” from the library of the eminent Viceroy and collector, Tuan Fang, who was murdered by his troops in Szuch’uan during the revolution. This work is mentioned in his catalogue as indisputably Southern Sung, and in this case also the paper is almost white. I may claim some knowledge of the Sung print, “Works of Tu Fu,” now at Cambridge, to which your article also refers, as it was formerly in my collection. Personally I believe it to date from about 1230, but a former Tartar general of Canton, Feng Shan, who was an authority on ancient prints, used to tell me that its date is early Yuan, say about 1290. He denied that the colour of the paper was a conclusive test, especially in view of the skilful “doctoring” of the old Chinese prints.
I am, Sir, &c.,
EDMUND BACKHOUSE
Sir Edmund Backhouse (as he later became) was regarded for much of the 20th century as one of the greatest European scholars of China, where he lived for decades until his death in 1944. His reputation stemmed in part from the inside knowledge of the Imperial court which he supplied to The Times’s correspondent in Peking. This letter dates from the period when the newspaper was starting to group all letters to it onto
a single page and records Backhouse’s donation of eight tons of historic Chinese manuscripts to the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Only in 1973 were the provenance of
many of these thrown into doubt when Backhouse’s biographer Hugh Trevor-Roper unmasked him as a liar, fraudster and fantasist who had wildly exaggerated his expertise and claims of influence.
* * * * * * *
The Redress of Crying Shames
28 February 1914
Sir, I am moved to speak out what I and, I am sure, many others are feeling. We are a so-called civilized country: we have a so-called Christian religion: we profess humanity. We have a Parliament of chosen persons, to each of whom we pay £400 a year, so that we have at last some right to say: “Please do our business, and that quickly.” And yet we sit and suffer such barbarities and mean cruelties to go on amongst us as must dry the heart of God. I cite a few only of the abhorrent things done daily, daily left undone; done and left undone, without shadow of doubt, against the conscience and general will of the community:
