LETTERS
In Toynbee's defence
Sir: On 13 June, we sent a letter to the Times after it reprinted from the Daily Mail an article attacking Polly Toynbee. We were informed by the letters editor that it would not be printed. We sent a revised version, which to date has not appeared in that newspaper either. We think your read- ers might be interested in its substance.
Today you devote two pages to reprinting, from yesterday's Daily Mail, a long, agonised letter from a woman whose husband told her, three years ago, that he had fallen in love with another woman — Polly Toynbee. You attempt to justify that bizarre use of your paper only by repeating the Mail's claim that there is a 'link' between Ms Toynbee's 'per- sonal experiences' and her support for the Divorce Bill.
That is preposterous: she has vigorously sup- ported a right to divorce for many years, in the course of a long marriage that ended with her husband's death, and nothing in the story even remotely suggests that either her advo- cacy or her behaviour has been hypocritical. It offends decent standards of journalism to see a public interest in what is so plainly only a very private matter.
Betsy and Ronald Dworkin Katya and Anthony Lester Sally and Anthony Sampson
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