2 AUGUST 1986, Page 21

Victorian racists

Sir: Mr Keown-Boyd rebukes me (Letters, 19 July) for calling Victorian soldiers racist when they killed African enemy wounded after a battle on the grounds that it is incongruous to 'stick late-20th-century labels on 19th-century men'. What non- sense. Are we to be denied any judgment of the past by the moral standards of our own time? On the basis of his own argu- ment I take it Mr Keown-Boyd would abstain from condemning the slave trade, for example, because the slavers and plantation owners saw nothing wrong in it. William Boyd

Parkville Road, London SW6