16 OCTOBER 2004, Page 40

Prizes prompt poetry

From Anthony F. Bainbridge Sir: Tiffany Jenkins (Arts, 2 October) is so right about the absurdity of all these meretricious cultural prizes. And yet there is little new under the sun: in June 1823 Macaulay lambasted the Royal Society of Literature for trying to encourage merit by distributing prizes. His essay is still a treat to read. Perhaps he was right too: in

calling for poems on 'Dartmoor' the society was trying to 'force into cultivation the waste lands of intellect'. Under our present culture-free government, what else can one expect?

Anthony Bainbridge

Plymouth, Devon