Simon Skinner

Julian Bell writes drolly to protest John Lanchester’s characterisation of the current political high command as white men in their forties with humanities degrees from Oxford, on the grounds that Nick Clegg is a white man in his forties with a humanities degree from Cambridge (Letters, 17 March). The wider question is whether these are men with ‘humanities’ degrees in any received sense of that...

Hilary Mantel’s lament for the NHS amplifies a rising note in popular comment on British hospitals: the incapacity and rudeness of so many nurses (LRB, 14 August). A corollary is appreciation for a new phenomenon, the conscientious and communicative hospital doctor. These views disorientate us, given the long-standing stereotype that nurses are the under-remunerated angels of the ward, while doctors...

E.S. Turner’s mention of the apocryphal encounter between John Wesley and ‘Beau’ Nash in Bath in 1739 reminded me of another later meeting in which Nash was supposedly bested (LRB, 21 July). Walking towards Wesley along a narrow pavement, Nash is said to have proclaimed, ‘I never make way for a fool.’ Stepping aside, Wesley replied: ‘Don’t you? I always do.’

John Sturrock, in his review of The Keys of Egypt (LRB, 19 September), remarks that its authors ‘sink to a new low in asinine anglicisation by turning the Ecole Normale into the Normal School’. Whether this is quite such a low is debatable, but it is very far from new. A proposal for a teacher-training Normal School administrating non-denominational religious instruction was central to the Education...

Another true story: a highly educated and linguistically gifted acquaintance, born and raised in Ohio, thought until adulthood that the opening line of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ was a homage to the Hispanic element in the US melting pot: ‘José, can you see…’