U and non-U
From Sir lain Moncreiffe of That Ilk Sir: I was consulted by my friend Nancy Milford before she wrote her controversial U and non-U article; and Pointed out that 'mirror' (Notebook, November 24) was not Victorian parvenu middle-class English but had come in at the Norman Conquest when be Vera coronets superseded kind hearts, although as we are told these are still worth more.
After her article, in spite of her defiance of my frank comments on her original typescript, I wrote again to Point out that my children's ancestral uncle, Sir Alexander Boyd (executed in 1469 for having kidnapped the young king to whom he was teacher of knightly exercises) was called by his contemporaries "a Mirror of Chivalry." She sent back an unrepentant postcard from Paris: "How could they? How vulgar of them." She was wrong On this point, and stubborn, but we do Miss her.
lain Moncreiffe of that Ilk Easter Moncreiffe, Perthshire
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