Spare the toasting fork .
Sir: I liked Strix's comments in 'Spectator's Notebook' (2 August) on fagging at Eton. When I was a fag there my fagmaster was up to a beak who set, as an extra work, the com- position of a sonnet on Bismarck. My fag- master was no poet, but I had acquired a reputation for poetry.
I was therefore ordered to produce the re- quired sonnet. I had no idea what a sonnet was, nor did I know who was Bismarck. A visit to the school library produced the necessary in- formation. I consulted various encyclopaedias and the works of Shakespeare and other poets. In the end I produced a sonnet which, if it was not great poetry, at any rate followed the rules of this particular verse form.
The beak in question was much impressed and, sending my fagmaster up for good, re- marked that he had not realised that my fag- master had so much latent talent! I think that my education benefited from this effort at
Rougham, King's Lynn, Norfolk
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