17 NOVEMBER 1990, Page 34

Ali's aunts

Sir: I have been shown two copies of Spectators, in one of which (Letters, 27 October) Alastair Forbes wrote about one of my wife's aunts in the 1920s, and in the next admitted he had confused her with her sister. This is amazingly uninteresting. But as The Spectator publishes this sort of thing I feel I should retaliate by making an amusing contribution about Forbes's aunts. Alas nobody seems to know any- thing about them, and the only interesting information I have received is that one of them married a Fox. This is certainly eccentric, and did the rest of his family go in for mixed marriages? If so, Forbes's articles suggest his father was a colossal Boar.

Antony Lambton

Cetinale, Siena, Italy

. . cutlery . . . bed linen . . . rape-alarm'