The submariners’ parade

Sir: My thanks to Matt Ridley for his excellent article on the Cenotaph (Symbol of peace’, 11 November). As a former Cold War submariner, while I was well aware that we paraded a week earlier than the official celebrations, I did not know the reason why. However, we did join the Armistice Day parade in 2001, the centenary of the Submarine Service: 167 submariners and ex-submariners marched to mark the memory of the crews of the 167 boats lost over the 100 years. We each had a badge with the individual name or pennant number of a particular boat. I was proud to have HMS Triumph, lost with all hands on 31 December 1941. She was finally located in June this year.

Mike Allen

Richmond, Surrey

Carving the Cenotaph

Sir: My maternal grandfather, Harry Grosse, was an out-of-work woodcarver at the end of the first world war. He was commissioned to carve the words ‘The Glorious Dead’ on the first wooden Cenotaph. I believe he went on to carve the choir stalls of Lichfield Cathedral and he gained further employment making wooden legs for soldiers who had lost legs on the battlefield.

David Edwards

Leighton Buzzard, Beds

Mass disconnection

Sir: Mary Wakefield’s justified worries about Gen Z should extend to us all (‘No wonder Gen Z have empathy problems’, 11 November). ‘The medium is the message’ has never been more apt. Does anyone honestly think we have become saner, collectively or individually, since smartphones arrived in 2013? People talk of being ‘connected’, but what I see so often around me is a mass disconnection that never existed before: people with eyes down, compulsively tapping, oblivious to others and their environment, with the ‘tense unfinished faces’ that Philip Larkin ascribed to neurotics.

Richard Purnell

Datchet, Berkshire

Lack of Trust

Sir: The National Trust’s General Counsel and Secretary, Jan Lasik, refutes Charles Moore’s assertion that the director of Restore Trust was being deliberately excluded from its AGM (Letters, 11 November), writing that this would have been ‘unjust and unconstitutional’. I have been a member of the Trust for many years and was astounded to receive literature for the AGM elections in which a ‘quick vote’ box was advanced. Members were invited to tick it to vote for candidates favoured by the existing Trust Council – a blatant attempt to influence the outcome and most insensitive when the Trust’s decision-making is reasonably under scrutiny.

At the AGM, a resolution was tabled to remove the practice. It was narrowly defeated (69,715 vs 60,327 votes), a result which – ironically – effectively entailed the use of the ‘quick vote’, with members being told that resolutions were not binding, but would be considered. Hopefully the Trust will take into account the number of people who voted in favour of the resolution. If it does, this will avoid the Trust becoming more detached from an ever-increasing proportion of its membership.

Trevor Standen

Wigginton, Herts

Clapping eulogies

Sir: I was interested to read Nicholas Coleridge’s comment on the etiquette of clapping after eulogies at memorial services (Diary, 11 November). I recently attended a memorial service at which there were two eulogies, one by a distinguished journalist and the other by a famous racehorse trainer. Both eulogies were equally good, but the first, by the journalist, was met by a stony silence. The one by the trainer was greeted with rapturous applause. Applauding is fine, but it occurred to me that to applaud one and not the other was just rude. They were clearly not applauding the deceased but the man making the eulogy, which seems to be rather missing the point.

Philip Blacker

Faringdon, Oxon

Disagreeing with Douglas

Sir: Matthew Parris (‘The dangers of righteous anger’, 4 November) cannot be the only one to disagree with Douglas Murray over the Israel/Gaza situation. A lifelong Tory, I was horrified to hear that because I am not of the left, I must support Israel without question.

What I would really like to know is why anyone who has the temerity to criticise the Israeli government is immediately accused of being an anti-Semite and of wishing to wipe all Jews from the face of the earth? One can criticise the government of any other country without being accused of ill-will towards its people, let alone of advocating a pogrom. It is this kind of doublethink that is most worrying in the present situation, and the Israeli government deploys it constantly. No country has a perfect government and no country’s government gets everything right all the time. No government is beyond criticism and that includes Israel’s.

John Murray

Guildford

Yarite

Sir: In his interesting article about a study of regional accents (‘Brown bread’, 11 November), Christopher Howse touches on a subject which has always fascinated me. Growing up in Winchester in the 1950s, I noticed locally the ‘h’ in house was often dropped, while in nearby Salisbury it was not. Much later, the girlfriend of my late brother-in-law, a well-brought-up girl, asked at a village fête in rural Hertfordshire, for a Coke and was given a cake (just as she pronounced it). Now, living on Teesside, I discover that a common greeting is ‘Yarite’, which means ‘Are you all right?’ – not to be confused with ‘Yararite’, which means ‘no, thanks’, as when offered another drink.

Daniel O’Hara

Saltburn-by-the-Sea, North Yorks  

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