Letters to the Editor
Capital Punishment Cunard Dawson, Ludovic Kennedy, John W. Harvey, R. Marker and others Men at Waugh Evelyn Waugh, Nancy Spain, Nancy Mitford, Joan Werner Laurie and others Political Prisoners Lady Violet Bonham Carter and others Politics and the Co-op Ron Ledger, MP Horsepower Politics Sir Frank Medlicott Chronicles of Narnia Dorothy L. Sayers Manners Abroad William Seeds Shackleton Margery and James Fisher CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
SIR,—I have been a reader of the Spectator for over thirty years. I haven't always agreed with all of its views, but I have always felt they were worth considering and reasonably expressed. I therefore feel constrained to ex- press my surprise and disgust at the leading article which appears on pages 81 and 82 of this week's issue. There is obviously much to he said on either side, but I cannot sec that there is anything to be said for differentiating between male and female murderers (except, perhaps, in the case of pregnant mothers).
I hold no brief for the journals (as at present managed) which you sneer at as 'the popular press' and 'the Sunday newspapers,' but is the Spectator any better when it displays huge headlines on its cover and first page about the case of a murderess, who has, for a crime which on her own evidence in court was quite deliberate, paid the penalty prescribed by the present laws of this country; and then, having declared its views that capital punishment is absolutely indefensible, goes on to cloud and foul the issue by dragging in the sexual ele- ment in a way which one might expect from some of the Sunday newspapers, but which ill accords with the views many of us have hitherto held of your journal?—Yours faith- fully,
CUNARD DAWSON
Bexon, 4 Dale Hall Lane, Ipswich
Previous page
