Schools

We don’t cut God Sir: The Revd Dr Peter Mullen suggests (Letters, 3 August) that Boris Johnson told him my BBC Great Lives programme had cut from our broadcast treatment of Samuel Johnson an extended discussion of Christianity’s role in Dr Johnson’s life. Boris J championed Samuel J for our programme, and your correspondent has been persuaded that Mr J argued at length the centrality of religion to the great lexicographer. I am fascinated by religion. My producers would not relegate a person’s faith where it was claimed as central to their greatness.

‘Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid there is no money. Kind regards — and good luck!’ Liam Byrne will forever be haunted by the note he left on his desk for his successor in 2010. Both coalition parties made much of what was supposed to be a joke about the difficulties of keeping Whitehall spending in check. David Cameron waved the note around in his victorious 2015 election campaign. Byrne later said he was so embarrassed by his mistake that he considered throwing himself off a cliff. There’s nothing funny about what Theresa May leaves on her desk for the next prime minister. Rather than just one pithy note, there’s a teetering, disorganised in-tray of decisions the Tory leader has been putting off.

Tears for fears Theresa May welled up while announcing her resignation in Downing Street. How often do leaders cry? — Lady Thatcher was seen to have tears in her eyes while being driven away from Downing Street for the last time. — Tony Blair nearly broke down in public, but not while in office — while responding to the publication of the Chilcot Report in 2016. — Several US presidents have been witnessed crying — and at a time when it was rare for men to be seen showing emotion in public. Dwight Eisenhower had to cover his face with a napkin to hide his tears in 1952, when recalling wartime experiences. — In the same year Richard Nixon was seen crying after surviving a funding scandal and being retained as vice-presidential candidate.

Will independent schools ever be sensibly discussed in the media, in politics or over the supper tables of the nation? It is a long-standing national habit to view all independent schools as aloof, expensive, exclusive and barred to almost everyone in the land. The impression is now gaining ground that the cost has become so great (the figure £40,000 a year crops up regularly) that soon only Russian oligarchs and other members of the world’s super-rich elite will be able to afford them. This takes to extreme lengths a misapprehension that all independent schools, of which there are 2,500, have been created in the image of a handful of famous public schools. Discussion revolves around the famous few as if they were typical representatives of the sector as a whole.