Burchill spanked
Sir: In her Diary comments on Vaclav Havel (11 July), Julie Burchill is like some infantile safari-park visitor who, from a place of safety, pulls down her knickers and shows her dirty bottom to a lion. Anyone who has seen even one of Havel's plays will know that he is an outstanding writer; and anyone who has met him will know that he is a man of remarkable modesty, generosity and intelligence. Of course he has made mistakes of a kind that a professional politi- cian might have had the adroitness to avoid; but in the less than three years of his presidency (Burchill refers ignorantly to 'the last few years of his rule'), he has earned wide respect and love among his fel- low countrymen.
'Why are the French so foul?' Burchill asks in the same Diary. Why, she might more relevantly ask, is she so foul?
Francis King
19 Gordon Place, London W8
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