17 MARCH 2007, page 30

Paterson’s Pranks

Sir: Could I, as the person who unwittingly provoked Jennifer Paterson’s outburst in the Spectator kitchen, say exactly what happened? I was not, as Simon Courtauld writes (‘Who......

High Table Hauteur

Sir: As the wife of a Cheviot farmer, I read with interest Charles Moore’s ‘Notes’ of 10 March. Hugh Trevor-Roper taught me history at Oxford. After I married and settled in......

Chávez V . Livingstone Sir: Anthony Browne (politics, 3...

Chávez is a ‘dictator’ four times, and a ‘socialist dictator’ twice. Really? Browne is referring to a man who has just won the latest of a whole string of elections with a......

Weasel Words

Sir: I am sorry to see a writer as generally well-informed as Frederic Raphael (Books, 10 March) trotting out the absurd legend that ‘ Hep hep ’, as an insult to Jews, derives......

En Grave D Stationery

� ngraved – or die-stamped – printing, in which the text is printed from a copper die and raised from the paper, is the very best type of printing there is. From shops in Bond......

Use Your Remote, Rod

Sir: Rod Liddle, in his excoriation of Red Nose Day last week (was there ever a subject easier to lambast, or one less in need of it?), tells us that, without the input of Billy......

Evil ‘i’

Sir: Allan Massie (Books, 3 March) missed a chance to bring up again the story of the most (in)famous use of the first person singular in English literature, i.e. the case of......