I was, of course, privileged to work with and under

her for several years. But I was hired, after four years with ITN, by Mr Leonard Miall, then head of BBC TV Talks, not by Grace Wyndham Goldie. June), which was evidently known to St Paul, Simon Jenkins (Centre point, 25 June) quotes a 'mediaeval spell' to which Deuteronomy xxvii, 17 bears an extraordi- nary prophetic resemblance. If — as Auberon Waugh remarked, also two or three weeks ago — hardly anyone reads the Bible nowadays, it can still be deconstructed. Timothy Stewart

London SW1

Stimulating mélange

Meadow End, Cold Ash, Newbury, Berks

Sir: What a joy it must be to be a journalist and have the means to vent one's spleen at will. Martin Vander Weyer (`The sky's the limit, old boy', 18 June) certainly takes full advantage of this facility in his tirade against head-hunters, and let me say how stimulating I found his mélange of generali- sations and stereotypes. It is such a shame that he gave the game away by revealing that his loathing is based upon his own experience of being replaced in a job by someone that his employers saw fit to head- hunt. I wonder, does this put him in the cat- egory of 'slightly dim former bankers and middle managers who struck out in their chosen career'?

Stephen Andrews

Bull Thompson & Associates Limited, Wellington House, 6/9 Upper St Martin's Lane, London WC2

Dignified duo

Sir: I think David de Pinna is unfair to use the expression 'Flower-pot men' as indica- tive of a lack of dignity (Letters, 18 June). I thought it was generally accepted that the names 'Bill' and 'Ben' were inspired by the great parliamentary debates between William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli.

J. Alan Smith Editor,

Mercurius Pragmaticus, 40 Albany Court, Epping, Essex

Holy deconstruction

Sir: Only three weeks after Professor Nor- man Stone's quotation in your pages of a German proverb (Ty land, sea and air', 4 `I'll take it off while we go through Belgium.' Sir: May I suggest that you do not replace your television reviewer immediately (Arts, 25 June)? Repeats of old reviews will suf- fice until the autumn.

Ian P. F. Dewar

48 Palace Road, East Molesey, Surrey

Insulted of Belgium

Sir: How preposterous that John Major, of all people, should feel entitled to conde- scendingly judge Mr Dehaene in the way he has deemed fit. Nothing less than an offi- cial apology will do.

Philiep Van Cauwenberghe

Smissenhoek 67, B9620 Zottegem, Belgium

City news

Sir: The same day the Telegraph announces that Simon Heifer is to become its joint deputy editor, £300 million is wiped off the newspaper's stock market value.

Can this be just coincidence?

D. Brown

121 Clapham Common Northside, London SW4

Competition winner

Sir: There have been so many splendidly boring books noted in your columns over the past few weeks that I have held off writ- ing in fear that the volume I have in my hands would be so startlingly boring that it would act as a nuclear deterrent and bring an end to the correspondence.

The time has now come, however, to reveal to the world the existence of Hospital Purchase Records Containing Grain Price Information in Fifteenth-Century Ghent, by Takashi Okunishi, published in 1993 by Kobe University, Japan.

I assume that this ends the competition.

Stephen Pollard

17C Windsor Court, Moscow Road, London W2

►►Images of the Earth"

A national painting and drawing competition for professional artists under 45

AP,