Funny foreign language
Sir: Writing from the chief town of Brabant (which he has the grace to spell in its English version 'Brussels' rather than its ludicrous French distortion 'Bruxelles'), John Whitton (Letters, 4 September) com- plains that anglophile Belgians were deeply offended that the death of their late king was handled as a secondary news story by the British Broadcasting Corporation More would have been offended to see him give his address as 'BoIte 7, Avenue des Eperviers 5', instead of: 'Postbus 7, Sperwersweg 5' — as the natives do.
Incidentally, the late king bore a name famous in the history of Flanders, but throughout the four and a half decades of his reign I never saw it written in an English paper (or pronounced on the wireless) either in its correct Flemish form or in its cognate English version — Baldwin — but always in a French misreading.
It is not by being John Bull that the Englishman is offensive to the locals on the continent of Europe, but when he is pranc- ing around Flanders, Greece or Russia pre- tending to be Jean Taureau.
lain Burgess
4 Cedars Road, Hampton Wick, Middlesex
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