Murray Sayle

Murray Sayle writes: I should perhaps make clear here, as I did to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, that the unpublished Sunday Times article was raw copy researched and written in four hectic and confused days, as opposed to the three months taken by the Widgery Inquiry, and two years plus by the current one. In the normal course of newspaper production the editors and sub-editors of the Sunday Times would...

Murray Sayle writes: I gave no advice on what we should or should not do about the spread of hydrocarbon civilisation because I have none to give. Nick Ainsley rightly says that we in affluent Europe, North America and Australia could cut our energy use and therefore our carbon dioxide emissions by more frugal habits, and such measures could make a token contribution, even if they meant switching from...

Even thirty years ago, travel in rural Afghanistan was, as Jason Burke says, arduous (LRB, 22 March). I was glad of armed guards on the vegetable truck I hitched from Bamiyan to Kabul, after a friendly warning that undefended vehicles were sometimes hijacked by opium smugglers, religious zealots and plain, old-fashioned bandits – and this was in the good old days, when Afghanistan still had a king...

Sylvia Lawson (Letters, 30 November 2000) puts me right on the date of the death of Peter Hall, the architect who completed the Sydney Opera House. Her correction, however, is itself a year out. I said (mistakenly) that Hall died in 1989. In real, as opposed to either Sayle or Lawson fact, Hall died, according to the Melbourne Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, who ought to know, on 19 May 1995.

I accept with thanks Dr Jian’s scholarly account (Letters, 19 February) of the true sources in classical Chinese of the mangled epithets reported from Hong Kong during the last days of British rule. Only the first two, however, appeared in my review. Actually, ‘eternally unpardonable criminal’ and ‘triple violator’ seem, on closer reading, to be no more than pithier versions of ‘statesmen...