Habsburg
Sir: Your American reader, Mr Lydon, writes (Letters, 13 April) requesting you to annoy me again. This you had, as it happened, already succeeded in doing by committing on the cover of that very issue the howling solecism of spelling Habsburg with a P. That is something Richard Bassett noticeably avoided doing in his article about Szabo's Hochhuthishly sub- jective film Oberst Redl (the humbly-born Ruthenian homosexual blackmailed into becoming a traitor who was some years ago served up d ?anglaise on the British stage in John Osborne's A Patriot for Me). As every schoolboy and girl used to know, the Habsburgs were of Swiss origin, taking their name more than 700 years ago from their Argovian eyrie Habichtsburg (Hawk's Castle). Incidentally, only a fool would say that we could not here in Western Europe sleep a lot safer in our beds if their Austro-Hungarian Empire had not at a silly stroke been removed from the map in 1918.
Alastair Forbes
1837 Chateau d'Oex, Vaud, Switzerland
Previous page
