Sir: Adding to Mr H. R. Pelly's note of amusement
regarding Mr Tony Palmer's pompous attitude towards youth may I recall an item of similar interest as that attitude and doubtless, if amusement isn't enough, of sociological pertinence.
At the peak of that hysteria— best chronicled so far by Mr Chris- topher Booker—when shoddy stan- dards were accepted as perceptive contributions to the ruin of West- ern values, I wrote a letter to a newspaper. An elderly lady of some education, given to writing in an asexual name, had made known her favourable view of modern youth but proceeded to display that her praise lay on a liberal basis. My response was partly prompted by a wish to be the first adolescent in print to subvert the Then eupho- ric, and now growingly tired, cult of youth. It seemed, doubtless, a strange experience for the gliberal readership of that newspaper, brooding on my words, if they studied them at all. The lady wrote back. In a note of studied courtesy, really an abuse of that virtue, the stylistic irony, half the point of my missive, was ignored. The follow- ing was written : 'When a corres- pondent adds his age to his signa- ture (P. M. O'Brien Burkley (17)) I never quite know whether it means "I'm rather young-so please make allowances" or "kindly note that I am now fully abreast of all modern thought, and thoroughly able to demolish the sloppy thinking of my elders." I feel that the latter is like- ly to be the case with Mr Burkley
Patrick Burkley The Kerries, Tralee, Co. Kerry, Ireland.
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