Decline of civilisation
Sir: While grateful for Rupert Chris- tiansen's timely interview with the Con- troller of Radio Three (Arts, 23 July), I rather wish he had challenged Nicholas Kenyon's extraordinary assertion that 'we cannot speak to people in the way that the Third Programme used to — it's a dis- course which is no longer understood'.
Taken at face value, this remark suggests a rapid, catastrophic decline in British intelligence and civilisation since the days of my youth and the Third Programme. On the other hand, like the parrot cry of so many Church of England clerics that the Authorised Version and the Book of Com- mon Prayer are no longer intelligible, it can be taken simply as representing a pitiful corporate failure of nerve within one of our national institutions when confronted with its own past achievements.
Timothy S. Stewart
Meadow End, Cold Ash, Newbury, Berks
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