My 2006

Letters

Vol. 29 No. 2 · 25 January 2007

From Richard Tugwell

Reading Alan Bennett’s diary I was pleasantly surprised to remark that there are quiet carriages on British (and US) railways (LRB, 4 January). I’ve been out of the country for several years and wasn’t even sure if you still had trains. At the same time I was intrigued to note that Bennett travelled with two companions. If they are occasioned to do the same on a visit to Switzerland then I strongly suggest that they start practising telepathy, or sign language at the very least. Here the quiet carriage (Ruheabteil) is indeed quiet. I saw one chap being berated (silently) for turning the pages of his newspaper too enthusiastically. Personally, being often a solitary, sulking traveller, I find these carriages a boon: no distractions from adjacent fellow human beings indulging in conviviality. I’m a bit surprised at how many people, normally English or French, are indignant at having the rules of the game pointed out to them, as if their human rights were being abused. The fact that the other 95 per cent of the train is available for raucousness doesn’t seem to count. Oh, and by the way, whispered exchanges between three people are much the worst violations. They disturb while at the same time making it impossible for you to figure out what the wretched people are talking about.

Richard Tugwell
Aesch bei Birmensdorf, Switzerland

From Rupert Haigh

Alan Bennett writes disapprovingly of the ‘plea-bargaining that goes on in the US’s nobly independent courts’, with the implication, if I read him right, that this would not happen in England. Plea-bargaining does of course exist in the English courts, albeit unofficially. Counsel will tend to refer to it in such coy formulations as ‘seeing the judge privately in chambers for an indication on sentencing and then taking a realistic view thereon’.

Rupert Haigh
Espoo, Finland