14 MAY 1994, Page 31

Sir: Those of us who suffered from, or administered, school

beatings remember the practice as one that was peculiarly English and essentially masculine — hence le vice anglais. Imagine, then, our distress at finding (the caption to last week's Portrait 7 May) that you have succumbed to femi- nist influence and now call it la vice anglaise. Is nothing sacred?

Simon Courtauld

Inglewood Lodge, Kintbury, Berkshire