Peter’s denial
Sir: In his article ‘The warmongers’ (24 October) Peter Hitchens is too extraordinary. In fact, General Sir Roland Walker is absolutely right to emphasise the threat from Russia. That is his job, especially when what he says is entirely in line with all the warnings from our Nato allies. The abject failure of Sir Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham to do so makes it even more essential, especially when one remembers how in the mid-1930s both British and French governments avoided alerting their own countries to the threat. For Hitchens to write of ‘stoking war with Russia’ puts him in the Donald Trump school of logic, pretending that Vladimir Putin, the shameless aggressor in Ukraine, is a ‘humanitarian’, no doubt adding to his reputation from Chechnya and Syria.
Antony Beevor
Canterbury
Screen time
Sir: As a deputy head and then head in four schools between 2008 and 2025, the debate about the EdTech revolution is something with which I am very familiar. I remember when Apple launched the iPad in 2010 and we excitedly purchased a class set, only to have no clear idea what to do with them. I don’t believe it is an either/or approach that is required in schools, or indeed at home. Any good school should have a clear educational philosophy at its core and then consider whether the use of technology in the classroom will improve learning. Brown quotes Sophie Winkleman that ‘the best and most impactful learning is relational’ and she is spot on. The closure of schools during the pandemic reinforced this point; many schools pivoted to online learning but it was quickly apparent that it was not nearly as effective or enjoyable as the cut and thrust of classroom engagement.
Mark Mortimer
Perthshire
Climbing the readerboard
Sir: I’m not a paid promoter of Sparx Reader but, having seen several articles critical of the programme, I feel compelled to defend it (‘Battle for the books’, 17 October). As the literacy lead at a London comprehensive, I have welcomed how Sparx encourages more reluctant readers to explore books and then compete with their peers to climb the leaderboard. Set texts can be prescribed, so the whole of Year 11, for example, can read A Christmas Carol before studying it. The avid readers Lara Brown describes have never in my experience been put off, as they see the programme as another way of reading, alongside books.
Basil Vincent
Woodford Green, Essex
Slowly but surely
Sir: In Flora Watkins’s article, Dr Jared Cooney Horvath claims that children don’t learn as well from screens (‘It’s all happened wickedly fast’, 17 October). It’s not as straightforward as that. One difficulty with EdTech is its isolating nature. In my 26 years as director of music at Eton, my best teaching was when I used an offline programme to teach 13-year-olds basic musical rudiments. The boys shared screens in pairs of roughly equal abilities and collaborated. They went gently as I insisted on no incorrect answers. If they rushed and became careless, I would zero their ‘correct’ box (‘Oh Sir!’). I had fun and so did they. The essence of this was that the fun was between the pupils, not between the pupils and a gamified screen.
Ralph Allwood MBE DMus
London SW1V
Lifeline
Sir: When I was hitchhiking around Italy in 1970, we received payment for donating blood which amounted to approximately two weeks’ worth of living costs, albeit mighty spartan (‘Notes on… giving blood’, 24 October). This explained the piles of rucksacks to be found outside the blood donor centres nearest to youth hostels in Rome and Florence. Sadly we were only allowed to be siphoned once a month.
Alastair Colgrain
Sevenoaks, Kent
Mail privilege
Sir: Christopher Howse’s reference to Anthony Trollope’s introduction of the pillar box in the 1850s (‘Mail bonding’, 24 October) reminded me of Charles Dickens’s relationship with the postal service. Because he received so much fan mail he was given his own personal mail bag. A prolific writer of letters himself (more than 14,000 still exist), he begrudged walking over a mile to the nearest pillar box, so in 1859 lobbied for the installation of (in effect) a personal post box. Built into the wall of his home at Gad’s Hill Place, it was one of the first wall-boxes installed in Britain. Disused in time, it was recommissioned in 2014, with a plaque alongside, recording its Dickens origin.
Peter Saunders
Salisbury, Wiltshire
One more dance
Sir: Richard Bratby (Arts, 24 October) finds it odd that Opera North’s Eugene Onegin remains in its Soviet sports centre for Act Three, just as Tchaikovsky ‘switches up into full Imperial court mode’, and notes that one of the act’s dances is omitted outright. Both choices have more of Tchaikovsky behind them than he allows.
Tchaikovsky called the work ‘lyrical scenes’ and kept it from the Bolshoi, fearing that its great stage would spoil the intimacy of the score. The first performance, in March 1879, was given at the Maly Theatre by students of the Moscow Conservatory. The court splendour arrived later, and by request. The opera reached the imperial stage in St Petersburg in 1884. Ivan Vsevolozhsky, director of the Imperial Theatres, wanted more ballroom and asked for an Écossaise, which Tchaikovsky composed and scored in August 1885. That is the dance Opera North omits.
David Woodard
Tampere, Finland
Am dram
Sir: I was interested in Toby Young’s comments about water with malt whisky and the oversupply of whisky products (No sacred cows, 24 October). In the late 1960s I asked the barman of the hotel I visited in Kingussie if I could sample a wee nip of his favourite whisky. Expecting a Speyside brand, imagine my surprise when he produced a bottle of Laphroaig, pouring a dram with the words: ‘This is special, and ye’ll no be havin’ anythin’ with it, will ye?’
Neil Carver
Wallasey, Wirral
Silly Salmon
Sir: Madeline Grant’s article on first names (‘The name of the game’, 24 October) reminded me of my visit to a fishing lodge in Kelso where the visitors book recorded the name of the previous occupant as Courtenay Salmon.
Peter Fineman
Barrow Street, Wiltshire
Manners maketh mutt
Sir: I have a solution to the problems associated with training a puppy rather than going to the enormous expense of buying one pre-trained (Dog’s life, 24 October). Your local Dogs Trust rescue centre will have one with perfect manners, desperate for a place to call home.
Veronica Woolf
Kington Magna, Dorset
Comments