SIR,—In last week's Spectator, you are pretty free- and-easy with
other people's property, especially with that of poor old British Railways.
Your leader-writer, discussing British Railways' report on thefts for 1961, says of certain items, `to categorise these as thefts is like charging the man who thinks he is Napoleon with impersonation.'
Leslie Adrian, in the same issue, says that before we are married and can fill the silver cupboard with wedding presents 'we remain content with an assortment of knives, forks and spoons, begged, borrowed or stolen from the parental sideboard, the college cafeteria, Joe Lyons and British Railways.'
Well, really. I suppose the bright Spectator reader also furnishes the linen cupboard with hotel towels and pillowcases, the bathroom with cakelets of hotel soap, and the dining-room with ashtrays and beer mugs from public houses.
Come to think of it, there are some rather pretty powder bowls in the Ladies' Cloak Room at the Savoy.
ANNE SCOTT-JAMES
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