Lawrence Hogben

J.M.C. Burton (Letters, 23 June) is quite right to find excuses for the German D-Day meteorologists because Zentralwetterdienstgruppe data for the period, whose existence Burton denies and which I have examined, demonstrate that their short-range forecasts of the weather elements were reasonably accurate. But for operational success, more than this was needed – the implications of a forecast for...

J.M.C. Burton (Letters, 23 June) is quite right to find excuses for the German D-Day meteorologists because Zentralwetterdienstgruppe data for the period, whose existence Burton denies and which I have examined, demonstrate that their short-range forecasts of the weather elements were reasonably accurate. But for operational success, more than this was needed – the implications of a forecast for...

The Pocock idea (LRB, 19 December 1991) of a New Zealander taking hold of a small globe and being unable to see further than Australia, Antarctica and water is the sort of conception that would normally be ventilated only by a wall-eyed geographer. New Zealanders, while inheriting the insular ego of the English and the Scots, have also their smug, avuncular universality, and ‘overseas’, in New...

SIR: There are only three million of us New Zealanders. So our writers presumably wish their communications to reach a wider audience than their home country. But why do they persist in writing English which requires you to supply a glossary to enable it to be understood by your readers? Anyone appreciates new words which introduce a new idea, or a new way of looking at an old idea, or a new organisation...

SIR: Your stern reviewer of Paul Fussell’s Caste Marks (LRB, 17 May) is evidently trying to prevent the emergence of an X-cult on this side of the Atlantic. Too late! It already exists here in France where an X is a polytechnician to whom no one would dare deny the other X-qualifications enumerated. But problems of definition will still exist. Last week, bedbound, I found that the only way to offer...