My late husband’s insatiable appetite for ‘sticky willies’

Labour’s just deserts

Sir: Last week’s leader hit the nail on the head (‘Desperate retreat’, 16 May). You have to wonder what is in the minds of the Labour party and specifically its potential new leaders Burnham, Rayner and Streeting. Their failure to read the room is what gave them the kicking they got at the local elections. Now they’re all expressing a wish to rejoin the EU, although Burnham will not apparently be campaigning on the issue in the forthcoming by-election. I bet he won’t! To bring an anti-Brexit, pro-EU agenda to an area dominated by Reform would be political suicide.

Furthermore, if I were a constituent of Makerfield, I’d feel mightily annoyed that my vote was being used as a stepping stone in one person’s political career. Labour has clearly learned nothing from the local elections. Instead of listening to the electorate, it is continuing its chaos and consequently seems to be accelerating its demise. Let’s hope the voters of Makerfield see through the manipulative nonsense.

John Roberts
Newton Mearns, Glasgow

Broad church

Sir: I read with some amusement your cover story, and in particular your correspondents’ characterisation of Progress as ‘ultra-Blairite factional headbangers’ urging Wes Streeting to ‘seize the moment’ (‘Red alert’, 16 May). I can confirm, categorically, that no such instruction was issued. We at Progress are a broad, temperate and thoroughly reasonable organisation. While we would not describe ourselves as headbangers, we have in recent months tried constructively to bang heads together.

As for ‘ultra-Blairite’: guilty as charged, if what is meant is that we are extremely proud of the party’s record in government, and the transformative achievements of the New Labour government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown (and the past two years), as opposed to those who seemed rather more comfortable in opposition. One notes, however, that Andy Burnham – not typically considered the standard-bearer of Blairite orthodoxy – is a former vice-chair of Progress. We contain multitudes, and our disciples are everywhere.

It is true that Wes Streeting did seize the moment at our annual conference on Saturday. He did a rare thing in the politics of the past decade: he made an argument. But that was well after your print deadline, so your correspondents can hardly have had us in mind.

Adam Langleben
Executive director, Progress, London SE1

Move over, Boomers

Sir: Charles Moore’s Notes (16 May) invited ‘anyone under 30 to produce retaliatory lists of what we oldies cannot do’. As one of those, here is my own modest contribution:

They do not know how to video call properly, or attach files to emails. They do not know how to use Revolut or efficient online payments apps. They do not know when to live up to their own self-mythologising, put the country first and approve the construction of new homes in their local areas, or free us from the burden of the triple lock. They appear not to know how to govern a country in general, or when to throw in the towel – particularly on the other side of the Atlantic.

But chief among them all, and perhaps most tragically, they do not remember that they were young once too and suffered the same contempt from their very own ‘fools in old-style hats and coats’. And so it goes with every generation.

Tom Forbes
London SW4

Analogue skills

Sir: While I cannot speak on behalf of my generation, I should like to reassure Lord Moore that at the age of 22 I am confident with all items mentioned. I wear an analogue watch, have tickets to the cinema this week, cold call as necessary, drive a manual car, introduce myself with a smile and firm handshake, and Pam Ayres’s ‘The Battery Hen’ is engraved in my memory. I shall not bore you further, but rest assured I can lay claim to the rest of the list.

A. Ollech
London NW

First ladies

Sir: I greatly enjoyed Madeline Grant’s profile of Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright (‘The glorious counter-culture of Two Fat Ladies’, 16 May). Some 30 years ago, I interviewed the pair for our short-lived food, drink and travel magazine Eat Soup. They were true eccentrics, from another age and great fun. But there was a third woman behind their success: the late producer-director Patricia Llewellyn. It was Patricia who put them together, lit the fuse and got them through long days on location. This was not easy. ‘If the idea’s good – they’ll do it,’ Patricia told me. ‘But if not, then forget it. There’s no middle ground.’

During this period, I would visit Patricia’s production office and Jennifer would occasionally pitch up to join us. A note from Hunter S. Thompson was pinned to the office wall: ‘The TV business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs,’ it read. With Pat Llewellyn’s help, Jennifer and Clarissa proved there were occasional and glorious exceptions to this rule.

David Lancaster
Brentford, Middlesex

Sticky wicket

Sir: Simon Kuper’s comments (Books, 9 May) about cricket’s county championship were some way wide of the mark. A trip to Taunton to watch Somerset CCC would show him a county team bursting with pride and sure of its identity. When batters reach 50 they are applauded as if they have reached a century, such is the level of interest and enthusiasm. If that is too far to travel, he can always go to the Oval, where Surrey’s membership and attendance for the county championship continue to climb to their best levels this century. At either location he would receive short shrift for
his half-baked generalisations.

Peter Hardy
London SE16

Lover’s lament

Sir: Frances Wilson notes that D.H. Lawrence would have recoiled from the use of his notorious novel for merchandising and gimmickry (Books, 9 May). One wonders what he would make of today’s residents of his native Eastwood enjoying cheap pints in a Wetherspoons named the Lady Chatterley.

Jack Drury
Eastwood, Nottinghamshire

Bun fight

Sir: Olivia Potts is to be applauded for her iced buns article (The Vintage Chef, 16 May). She writes that they may also be known as Swiss buns or iced fingers. At Benenden school in the 1960s, they were called Greased Rats and offered at morning break. We had a delight in calling food by disgusting names: chocolate blancmange was Ganges Mud and jam roly-poly was Dead Man’s Leg. My adorable late husband used to call iced buns ‘sticky willies’, and enjoyed upsetting the good ladies in the village bakery by requesting a bagful.

Bumble Brice
High Halden, Kent