Readers’ Letters

The Oldie, 23–31 Great Titchfield Street, London, W1W 7PA letters@theoldie.co.uk To sign up for our e-newsletter, go to www.theoldie.co.uk

Why Boris is Boris

SIR: I write to correct some clear inaccuracies in the September issue. My wife was the great niece of Boris Litwin, a wealthy Jewish businessman in Mexico City. His daughter, Barbara (Bapsi), my wife’s cousin, knew Stanley Johnson at the time when he was proposing a tour to the Americas. Barbara said to Stanley that if they got to Mexico City they should look up her father. This they did, and Boris Litwin entertained them.

Stanley’s partner was pregnant and Boris, concerned about the long journey back to New York by bus, gave them air tickets to fly direct. It was then that Stanley said that if the child was a boy he would be called Boris. This can be corroborated if necessary. Lindsay East, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire

Rudolf Hess’s snowman

SIR: In ‘I Once Guarded Rudolf Hess’ (August issue), Valentine Cecil describes Hess making a snowman and says, ‘He had built the head separately from the body […] I did wonder if this mode of snowman-building had some Nazi link’.

If it did, then every snowman ever built anywhere in North America has had a Nazi link – here, we always make our snowmen in separate sections, rolling one big snowball for the base, one slightly smaller for the chest and one smaller still for the head. How do you do it in the UK? Perhaps there isn’t enough snow to roll, and you scrape and pat it into a little mound? Puzzled and curious, Elizabeth Cowan, Picton, Ontario, Canada

‘Martial arts is next door. This is marital arts’

Super Minis

SIR: Reading your article about the Mini Cooper (August issue) brought back wonderful memories of my youth when, in my early driving years, I borrowed two Minis (non- Coopers) from my elder sister and managed to dent them both.

A friend of ours told me she had acquired a new car and I asked what it was.

She replied it was a cooped-up Mini Super which described a souped-up Mini Cooper quite perfectly. Trevor Edwards, Eye, Suffolk

Go to Hell, scammers!

SIR: The article on Dante by AN Wilson (September issue) prompts an immediate response to his lasting relevance in our troubled times. One thing I have retained from studies long ago is Dante’s distinction in the Divine Comedy between malizia and frode in the treatment of criminals in the Inferno. There it is related that those guilty of the latter – fraudsters of all ilk: cheats, con men and tricksters – were singled out to be roasted in a much hotter circle of Hell than the former, mere murderers, rapists and the like.

As a victim of an online scam, subsequently enlisting as a trading standards monitor, I delight in the thought that a similar severity might be meted out to the woefully few scammers who don’t get away with it.

Given the opportunity, I’ve delighted in tutoring Dante to the police dealing with my own misfortune. Michael Rand Hoare, London SW17

Merchant navy blues

SIR: I was very disappointed to note that Merchant Navy Day (3rd September, every year) did not get a mention in September’s Quite Interesting Things. We (rightly) keep hearing about the plight and shortage of lorry drivers, but we never hear a dicky bird about the hard-pushed merchant seafarers who relentlessly ensure that our goods are exported and, more importantly, that all the food, raw materials and consumer goods we need are imported.

As an island nation, we rely on the UK sea-freight industry for 95 per cent

of our trade volume (www.stastista.com). We need to think on! Yours faithfully, Steve Whalley (former Merchant Navy Radio Officer), Cheadle, Cheshire

Sir Les made me cry

SIR: Sir Les Patterson’s farewell piece (September issue) is the most foulmouthed, non-PC, anti-woke I have ever read. I was crying with laughter from start to finish. Wonderful! Yours faithfully, Jerry Emery, Lewes, East Sussex

Sir Les made me cheer

SIR: The article in the September issue by Sir Les Patterson was absolute filth. Marvellous. Yours, David Brearley, Rawdon, West Yorkshire

Reviewers’ double faults

SIR: In the past few issues, there have been four reviews of books that have been wholly or partly hatchet jobs on three of Britain’s greatest men: one on Churchill, one on Cromwell and two on Charles Dickens. None of these has taken the opportunity to point out for your readers that they contain serious errors.

It should have been known without checking, for example, that Churchill did not send troops into Wales to put down miners; nor was he responsible for the disastrous Gallipoli campaign – no more than Charles Dickens was responsible for Mrs Dickens’s religion being opposed to family planning, or for her walking out on her children when the youngest of them was only six years old. Both claims are implied in the subheading ‘Poor Mrs Dickens’ added onto one review.

By repeating uncritically the content of flawed books, just as the books repeat errors from other flawed sources, The Oldie’s reviewers help doubly to mislead its readers, instead of helping them to make good choices of books that they may think of buying. Yours etc, Professor AJ Pointon, Portsmouth, Hampshire

The joy of Covals

SIR: I’m pleased to learn (Old Un’s Notes, September issue) that a word [Coval] has been coined that encapsulates one of the few occasions in my life when I felt my body suffused in absolute joy.

I was in my early 20s, out hiking on Kinder Scout in Derbyshire with a group of friends on a day of perfect weather. I stood at Kinder Downfall, gazing at the sparkling, rushing waters, when a feeling of total pleasure engulfed my whole being. In recent years, I mentioned this phenomenon to a Christian friend who declared it was God infusing me, an explanation that, as an agnostic, I found to be highly unlikely. Or maybe it was God infusing me, but he/she failed to reveal him-/herself.

I love The Oldie; the range and quality of the writings are so uplifting when the world around us is going raving mad. Regards, Tony Bailey, Lutterworth, Leicestershire

‘I don’t play favourites. I’m disappointed by all my children equally’

My two Covals

SIR: How strange, your article [in Old Un’s Notes] appearing in the September issue, as I had a ‘turn’ a few days before receiving this issue. Now I know what it’s called.

This Coval happened while I was walking my dog on the heath behind my house. I felt so pleasant and at one with the world – it was a fine sunny day with puffs of white cloud. It lasted about 30 seconds.

This wasn’t the first time. Back in about 1993/94, after I had taken early retirement from an IT job at BT, I was struggling to find another similar job that paid well. Again, I was walking down a country lane with my dogs back to my house, when it felt as if something went through my body, I felt warmth and euphoria and an inner voice saying, ‘Everything is going to be fine.’

A week later, I had an interview with a small IT company and, days later, they offered me the job. Kind regards, Alan Taylor, St Albans, Hertfordshire SIR: My Coval was in around 1970. It was a Sunday morning in my home in Potters Bar. My husband and two small children were still asleep in bed upstairs and I stood looking out of the window at a weeping willow in the front garden, just coming into leaf. A joint of pork was waiting in the fridge for our Sunday dinner. It was a feeling of deep contentment that I have never forgotten.

Incidentally, I believe Coval Lane is in Chelmsford, not Great Baddow. I grew up in Chelmsford and I think I used to be taken to a dentist in Coval Lane – so not the happiest of associations for me! Joyce Wallis, Potters Bar, Hertfordshire

The Essex Woodstock

SIR: I read with great interest John Bowling’s short article (Memory Lane, August issue) on the Essex Woodstock.

Living in the locality, I was able to make the Sunday finale of T Rex and Rod Stewart – with Maggie May being encored 26 times!!! Access was, by this time, easy – so it was a free concert as the Hells Angels had disappeared and security was virtually non-existent.

As Radio Caroline had been forced to stop broadcasting, it was really fabulous to hear and see artists who went on to become superstars.

Unlike at most other music festivals, there was never another show. So we had the best at the right time. Roland Brockman, originally Frintonon-Sea, now Matching, Essex

Brand aid

SIR: I totally agree with Matthew Norman’s anger (September issue) at insurance brands increasing premiums for continuing ‘loyal’ customers. One other issue is often not noticed, however. If you look at the small print, you frequently find that both the highpremium brand-name and the low-premium brand-name policies are in reality often being provided by exactly the same mega-insurance company. Neal Whitehead, Yatton, Bristol