That’s not entertainment

Sir: How very disappointing — and quite shocking — to see The Spectator Australia (15 February) featuring a cover illustration of the psychopathic protagonist of Wolf Creek (and, presumably, Wolf Creek 2). It is the mark of a rather sick society that such fare is served up as ‘entertainment’: why is it acceptable for a character to be shown ‘slicing off a sobbing backpacker’s fingers and severing her spinal cord so she’s a paralysed “head on a stick”’? (As per Dean Bertram’s description).

The Wikipedia page on this film indicates other details of this so-called ‘masterpiece’: ‘Liz awakens late the next afternoon to find herself tied up in a shed. She manages to break free as night falls, but before she can escape the mining site, she hears Mick torturing Kristy in a garage, and witnesses him sexually assaulting her… Mick shows up in the back seat and stabs her through the driver’s seat with a huge knife. After more bragging, he hacks three of Liz’s fingers off in one swipe, then picks her up and headbutts her into near unconsciousness . . . As Liz lies motionless on the garage floor, the camera dwells on her appalled gaze and laboured breathing.’
The Spectator Australia should know better than to be promoting such material.
Darby Brooke
Auckland, New Zealand

ME is real

Sir: Rod Liddle may or may not be right that certain illnesses become fashionable once given a name and are illusory (‘Children with a severe case of the excuses’, 15 March). But ME — myalgic encephalomyelitis, alias post-viral fatigue syndrome or yuppie flu, is not one of them. It’s an unpleasant physical illness: it ruined seven years of my life. It probably takes a number of forms, but in my case it started with chicken pox, caught off my infant son. I seemed to make a complete recovery until a year later, when I began to experience unpleasant symptoms. These included abnormal sensitivity to sound and light, violently inflamed eyes and blisters around the head and upper body. There was also nominal aphasia (problems recalling words). This is because the surfaces of the brain are inflamed. The mental fuzziness is compounded because the body can no longer process yeast properly.

Like malaria, it cycles on and off, and after an attack, which might last a few days, I felt terrible. I would have a week or two feeling OK, then the cycle would begin again. I’m a professional musician, and we tend not to advertise our ailments any more than journalists do, but this was real. In the end, with an anti-yeast drug and a strict diet, the attacks grew milder and less frequent and life returned to ‘normal within limits’, but the memory remains of an awful period that was caused by a virus (identifiable by a blood test). Sorry to spoil a good polemic with facts that don’t fit.
John Rutter
Whittlesford, Cambridge

Coeliac disease is real too

Sir: I want to correct some dangerous comments about coeliac disease made in Rod Liddle’s article which, if repeated enough, could put the health of others at risk. Feeding gluten to someone with the disease will make them ill. Coeliac isn’t a food allergy; it’s an autoimmune disease. The body may not react immediately, as in an allergy, but a reaction will be inevitable. Knowingly feeding gluten to someone with the disease is the equivalent of assault — something, even for the sake of stirring up a little controversy, I hope the Spectator would not advocate.
Sarah Sleet
Chief executive, Coeliac UK

The P word

Sir: Brendan O’Neill (‘Absent friends’, 15 March) wonders at length why Israel is so disliked, and he variously ascribes its unpopularity to fashion, bigotry or anti-Semitism. Perhaps there is another explanation. I read his article without once coming across any of the following words: settlement, Palestine or Palestinian.
John Hatt
Firbank, Sedbergh

Behind the mask

Sir: Brendan O’Neill’s perceptive article (15 March) puts into place those who say that it’s ‘the occupation’ that has made the hatred of Israel so fashionable. I have just finished reading The Boats of Cherbourg, which describes how difficult it was for Israel to buy ships from any western states in the early 1960s, even though they were needed for defensive purposes, and the same states had no compunction in selling all sorts of weapons to Israel’s enemies. And at the start of the Yom Kippur war, when it looked as if the Israelis would be overrun, the Europeans refused to rearm the Israelis to counter Soviet deliveries to Egypt and Syria, or even permit the Americans to overfly mainland Europe to do so. So when they were losing, the Israelis were despised for being weak, and now they are stronger, they are hated for winning. It’s unsurprising that even left-wing Israelis take our platitudes about supporting their right to live within secure borders with an unhealthy helping of salt.
David Reuben
London WC2

Who’s Great and why

Sir: Part of the answer to Chris Harries’s question (Letters, 15 March) is that the epithet ‘the Great’ is often used to distinguish the founder of a family or dynasty, many of whose descendants bore the same name. Pompey, to whom he refers, is an example; so is Herod the Great, not to be confused with Herod Antipas or Herod Agrippa, and insured against confusion by the epithet. No one is likely to attribute other forms of greatness to either.
Roger Farrington
London SW1