Boasting

State of the nations Sir: My spirits were raised by your stirring defence of the forthcoming royal visit to America (‘Britain’s Trump card’, 14 March). Its contemporary importance can be viewed in the light of Charles Moore’s Note (same issue) that the remaining hereditary peers have just been removed from the House of Lords. The monarch has thereby become the only person with a part in our legislature by virtue of inheritance, a situation bound to encourage those with republican instincts. Their tired old question will be resurrected: why can we not elect our head of state? The answer will be evident in pictures from the White House. The hereditary

No one likes a blatant boaster. So, as adults, we learn that if we want to boast, we must be subtle about it. The way to show off without being loathed is to drop small details about your life into your conversation and your prose, to signal your taste, education, career achievements and social status. Doing this is tricky enough for right-wing people, who need to come up with subtle ways of letting others know, for example, that they can afford private school fees, went to Oxbridge, shop at Waitrose, own at least one home and go on holiday in Provence or Tuscany. Words and phrases such as ‘exeat’, ‘scraped