Schools

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.

Fresh eyes can see a solution the experts may miss. At school I discovered the cure for cancer aged 13. I was in a science lesson and I was only half-listening because I found the nerdy, white-coated teacher faintly absurd. And yet the branches of science intrigued me. I loved physics (rockets), I quite liked chemistry (explosions) and I had a passing interest in biology (tadpoles); it was a biology lesson that prompted my brainwave. The boffin was describing the division of cells and he mentioned that tumours evade detection because they grow at the same rate as healthy tissue. Human macrophages are primed to attack bacteria that multiply faster than normal cells. Hey presto. A bulb went ping in my head.

As the author of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, I have to acknowledge that I still have some way to go to match the radioactive negativity Harry and Meghan generate with their every move. The Sussexes’ accumulated expertise in committing increasingly nauseating acts of hypocritical entitlement with every week that passes should qualify them both for a Regius Chair in Blithe Privilege at the University of Self-Regard. The latest episode in their narcissistic odyssey – The Sillyad – has been their agonising over where to send their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, to school. Harry and Meghan’s decision to educate them in England is, in its way, admirable.